


Veracity

by JenniferNapier, Navy_Bird, stlouisphile



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate - Freeform, Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Camping, Dark, Dark Past, Darkness, Deer, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Guns, Hunters & Hunting, Hurt, Kidnapping, Lies, Medical, Medical Torture, Memory Loss, Monsters, Murder, Murder Family, Murder Mystery, Mystery, Needles, Parallels, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Season 1 Finale, Season Finale, Sins of the Father, Spooky, Surgery, Torture, Trapped, Truth, Vomiting, Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:41:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 21
Words: 55,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27236680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenniferNapier/pseuds/JenniferNapier, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Navy_Bird/pseuds/Navy_Bird, https://archiveofourown.org/users/stlouisphile/pseuds/stlouisphile
Summary: Malcolm remembers what happened during that fateful camping trip. At least, he believes he does. The profiler returns to Claremont to confront The Surgeon about the truth, only to have his doubts and fears rekindled. In this psychological, angsty, whumpy thriller, Malcolm dives into the depths of not only his own memories, but also the memories of The Surgeon, The Junkyard Killer, and even The Girl In The Box in a desperate attempt to uncover the truth.  ALTERNATE ENDING TO SEASON 1.
Relationships: Ainsley Whitly & Martin Whitly, Eve Blanchard & Malcolm Bright, Gil Arroyo & Malcolm Bright, Gil Arroyo & Martin Whitly, Jessica Whitly & Martin Whitly, Malcolm Bright & Ainsley Whitly, Malcolm Bright & Martin Whitly, Malcolm Bright & Paul Lazar | John Watkins, Malcolm Bright & Sophie Sanders | The Girl in the Box, Martin Whitly & Sophie Sanders | The Girl in The Box, Paul Lazar | John Watkins & Martin Whitly
Comments: 22
Kudos: 44
Collections: Prodigal Son Big Bang 2020 - Extended Posts, Prodigal Son Big Bang 2020 - Saturday Posts





	1. PART ONE - The Body

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stlouisphile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stlouisphile/gifts), [Sop12345d](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sop12345d/gifts), [Navy_Bird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Navy_Bird/gifts).



> An enormous 'thank you' to my beta reader Sop12345d and artists NavyBird and stlouisphile who created some fantastic artwork to go along with this fanfic [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27184162) and [here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27204646) It was so fun to be a part of the Pson_Big_Bang challenge and create new fan content for this final week of October. Be sure to check out all the other awesome pieces in this collection!
> 
> I wrote this fic to fill in some holes about The Camping Trip storyline which I believe the show writers didn't deliver as well as they could have. Also, I didn't particularly like the direction they went with The Girl In The Box, and how Martin just let her escape because of all of the Endicott business. So, I wrote my own alternate version of how that all could have gone down, and how Malcolm could have uncovered the truth about it.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS:  
> \- Descriptive violence, bodily gore, death and injury.  
> \- Descriptive needles and vomiting.  
> \- Descriptive hunting, guns, and guts.  
> \- Mental trauma, physical abuse, and kidnapping distress.  
> \- Child abuse? Probably.  
> \- Language.
> 
> [MUSIC PLAYLIST](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjOKTeEv2dM3kUq3kumUF7T-n1dgKKr1D)

A train of gurneys awaited in the medical examiner’s lab. Upon the gurneys, light blue tarps served as full-body blankets for those who rested in peace. The profiles of the human bodies bore similar yet differing crests and dips, forming mountain ranges with characteristics that were each unique in their own ways. The medical examiner walked along the trail of death, taking note of the information written on each tag attached to the deceased's feet.

Confused, the examiner looked up from his clipboard a few times to verify that, _yes,_ there _was_ an additional body in this queue of corpses --one that was unaccounted for in his paperwork and did not have a tag on their foot. He approached the extra gurney and lifted the covering to see who lay beneath it.

The deceased woman’s skin was taut and green. Her lips, blue. Her carcass, cold. Her eyelids were closed, but upon closer inspection, they appeared to be glued down. Additionally, they were sunken in. It was not difficult to guess that she was missing her eyes beneath those deflated lids. The cadaver’s abdomen was sunken in as well, likely empty of her organs. Her supine profile was sharply defined by her protruding hips and rib cage, causing her to appear grossly anorexic. Her cheeks and lips were sunken in too, signifying that her teeth were also missing.

As the medical examiner completely removed the tarp from the corpse, he cast a perplexed look over the delicate incisions that were sutured shut across the woman’s torso in a Y shape. The incisions originated at each shoulder, met beneath the corpse’s clavicle, and ran down her sternum in a vertical line. Then they branched off in another Y shape, this one upside-down, at the bottom of the woman’s rib cage. The incisions were impressively symmetrical and clean, as if they had been cut with a very precise blade --and the stitches closing them were so immaculate that they may as well have been applied by an industrial sewing machine.

The examiner glanced around and called to his coworkers, demanding to know who this cadaver was, and who had delivered her into his lab. But his coworkers were just as perplexed as he was. Within minutes, the NYPD was notified of the surprise guest. Three detectives rushed to the facility.

“It’s a present,” one of them rasped, already enraged at the sight of the body. “A gift. He wants us to see what’s inside. Cut it open,” he barked with breath that reeked of gin.

The second detective shot his colleague a look. “Jesus, Owen. That’s a _person.”_

 _“He_ didn’t see her as a person,” the first detective hissed. “He saw her as a project.”

The medical examiner argued, “We’re going to take some samples and run a few tests before we perform an autopsy, Detective Shannon.”

As per usual, Owen Shannon wasn’t interested in following protocols. The hourglass of his patience was just as short as the fuse to his temper. “He wanted us to _open it,_ that’s why he sent it directly here."

The third detective, a certain Mr. Ian Turner, nodded in agreement with his partner. Being the odd man out, the second detective folded his arms and kept his mouth shut, but he did not like the sound of this.

The medical examiner wheeled over a cart of tools and began carefully severing the sutures. Someone had taken great time and care to sew up this cadaver, and they’d done so with an experienced hand. Indeed, the corpse seemed to have already undergone some sort of autopsy before it had been ‘delivered,’ as Detective Shannon described it. They four of them could only hope that the poor woman had already been dead when she’d experienced such a thing, and had not been the subject of a vivisection.

They all scrunched their battleworn faces as a putrid smell wafted up from within the no-longer-sealed corpse. It grew increasingly unbearable as the medical knife progressed, releasing the tension of the suture threads as it nicked and picked at them. When all of the sutures were cut, the medical examiner slipped his gloved fingers into the opening at the cadaver’s sternum and found that her layers of muscle and subcutaneous fat were already separated from her ribcage. Her flesh was simply lying over top of her bones, unattached. He tenderly lifted the loose layers, opening her body from the center outward --like a travel pamphlet. The pungent smell increased tenfold as he did so, and the three NYPD officers hovering behind his shoulder braced for the wretched odor to meet their nostrils.

“Oh, God.”

“What the _fuck?”_

The cadaver’s thoracic cavity was empty --at least, empty of what _should_ have been inside. She possessed no heart. No lungs. No thymus gland or esophagus. The four men were not greeted by the gorey sight that they were expecting. All that greeted them was the source of the fetid smell.

“Jesus Christ.”

The cadaver lay before them on the metal gurney, harvested and hollow, looking like a tasteless Halloween decoration. Her ribs were clean, freed from the flesh that should have webbed them together. They served as a cage to display and house another deceased creature inside of the deceased body. 

“It’s a... bird,” Detective Shannon grimaced.

The creature appeared to be an Eastern Bluebird; the kind you saw fluttering about in Manhattan's parks by the dozens. The bright blue feathers of its head, back, and wings contrasted against the dull, bloodless color of its prison --while the feathers of its chin were muddy, as if it’s tiny little throat had been slit and bled down its breast.

“A _bird?_ ”

“He thinks it’s _art,”_ Detective Shannon hissed in disgust.

Maybe, in some twisted way, it was.

The bird was stiff and preserved as if it had been taxidermied; frozen in a pose with its delicate wings outstretched and its beak open, as if either singing, begging for sustenance... or screaming. It was perched on a whittled fibula that extended from one side of the rib cage to the other, securely fastened by small screws that had been driven through the bones. If the display hadn’t been evidence in a homicide, it would have been worthy of the Smithsonian.

Detective Turner forced a wave of nausea to remain in his stomach and pulled out his flip phone to call in the crime scene unit. The other detectives remained staring at the adorned corpse while the medical examiner hurried away to find a sink to vomit into. It would be a miracle if he didn’t faint before he reached one.

“Is that some kind of... message?” the second detective asked, his voice weaker than it’d ever been. “What is-? Why-? Why would-?”

“I don't _fucking_ know. It's not my job to figure out _why_ the fuck someone would do this. It's my job to catch this fucker,” Detective Shannon seethed as he drew his flask out from behind his badge and unscrewed the cap. “And I’m _going_ to catch him. I'm going to catch him if it's the last thing I do.”

The man emptied his flask into the back of his throat.

“Take a good, _long_ look, Detective Arroyo,” Owen Shannon advised with a fierce hatred in his eyes. “That's the work of a fucking _psychopath.”_

“That's the work of ‘The Surgeon.’”


	2. The Girl

The bluebirds were singing outside of the tall window, which was slightly open to allow the scent of breakfast to waft free from the kitchen. The window would be closed later, when she returned home.

A news report flashed across the television, but the person that should have been its viewer was busying herself with other things, allowing it to chatter in the background as she went about her daily routine. Her routine included moving the laundry from the dryer to a basket that she placed upon the couch. The clothes within it would be folded and put away later, when she returned home. The young woman’s routine also included setting her breakfast plate and fork in the sink. She would rinse and then place them on the rack to dry later, when she returned home.

And lastly, her routine included donning a fuzzy blue and black jacket over her shoulders, partially zipping up the front, and weaving her long brunette hair into a French braid behind her head. She securely fastened it with a few twists of an elastic so no disobedient strands could escape and fly away. She hadn’t showered yet, but she would do that later, when she returned home.

The televised report boasted of ‘Breaking News’ and was delivered by an enthusiastic reporter who appeared to have some difficulty reading the script provided to them without grimacing while doing so.

“...who is believed to be another victim of the serial killer known as ‘The Surgeon.’”

The woman listened as the reporter described the victim’s physical characteristics. An image of the victim’s face was displayed on the screen. The victim’s eyelids were closed as if in a tranquil slumber, misleadingly peaceful-looking.

“If you recognize this person and can identify her, please contact the NYPD.”

The woman frowned with sympathy as she watched the brief report, somewhat wishing she had recognized the image so she could have done something to help in the investigation. On the other hand, she also was  _ glad  _ she didn’t recognize the face. She couldn’t help but briefly wonder what that other lady might have experienced before her demise. She thought that meeting death by being the victim of a murder was a very unfortunate, sorrowful, and terrible tragedy.

But she also thought it was a very  _ distant  _ tragedy. One that she never expected she  _ herself _ would face.

The woman turned the television off, ensured her keys were in her pocket, and decided to leave her phone behind. It would be good for her to unplug, she thought. Just for a little while. She’d check her messages later, when she returned home.

She left the house to continue about her morning routine by taking a jog through the park.

The window was never closed.

The clothes were never folded and put away.

The dishes were never rinsed and placed on the rack to dry.

The shower never steamed.

And her phone was never checked for messages.

But the messages came. Her little sister would spend the next twenty years asking about her disappearance. Asking what had happened to her.

And most importantly,  _ why? _


	3. The Visit

It was nearly becoming a part of Malcolm Bright’s weekly routine to visit The Surgeon at Claremont Psychiatric Hospital. What he once vowed never to do again, he now did much more often than he was proud of. But this time --more than all other times before-- he _had_ to pay a visit to his father. He needed the truth. The whole truth.

And today, he was finally going to get it.

“I remember what happened," the stern-faced young man announced, elaborating, "On that camping trip.” The tone of his voice proved he was not happy about it.

Martin usually perked up whenever his son visited him, but after that greeting, he perked up more than usual. “Oh,” he chirped, masking his reaction with cheer. Allowing a hint of nervousness to peek through his facade, Dr. Whitly dragged his eyes over the boy from head to toe and back again. Then, he smiled. “You do?”

Malcolm solemnly, _hatefully,_ nodded.

“Well...” Martin leaned back in his desk chair, laced his fingers together, and canted his head, curious to hear what the profiler _believed_ he remembered. “What happened?” 

“You killed The Girl in The Box.”

Dr. Whitly’s anticipatory smile widened, and he nearly laughed. “Did I?”

Malcolm analyzed the nature of his father's cruel grin with a hawk-like intensity. He did not appreciate the psychopath’s swiftness to resort to a humorous tone, nor his attempts to act clueless and innocent. Dr. Whitly was neither. He was _never_ neither. It was always an act, Malcolm had learned, even when it was a convincing one.

“You did,” the profiler quietly seethed.

Martin chuckled, briefly holding his hands up in a false, mocking surrender. “Alright.” But folding his hands in his lap again, he inquired, “ _How?”_ With a squint of his eyes, he played along and gave his amnesiac son the benefit of the doubt. _“How_ did I kill her?” 

Malcolm didn’t answer.

“You don’t remember,” Dr. Whitly smirked, as if all of Malcolm's ‘memories’ were discreditable because he couldn’t recall that one key detail.

“I remember plenty,” Malcolm snapped.

“No you don’t,” Martin corrected him with a shake of his head, his voice warm and forgiving. This conversation was highly entertaining to him, but he remained reverent because clearly, it was important to Malcolm. “You only _think_ you do.”

Malcolm grit his teeth at the belittlement.

“So tell me, son,” Martin welcomed, eager to hear his speculations. “What _do_ you 'remember?’”

The profiler took a breath, and told him.


	4. The Knife

Malcolm fiddled with his pocket knife, staring at it as if it was one of his brain teaser puzzles. His small hands pulled the blade open and then folded it closed, giving the tiny hinge a steady workout. He knew where to put his fingers on the tool, and more importantly, where not to put them. He had quickly learned the proper way to handle a knife by observing the way his father handled them.

The boy had also learned the proper way to give someone a knife. Every time his father handed a blade to someone, especially to Malcolm himself --whether it be a serrated knife to cut a steak, an Exacto knife for precision craft-making, or even a butter knife for spreading red jelly on school lunch sandwiches-- he’d used one smooth motion of his wrist to turn the knife around so the tip was pointed at himself, the handle pointed outward. Malcolm figured it was for safety, so the receiver of the gift did not accidentally get cut by the tool when they took it.

 _“Don’t worry, daddy, I won’t cut myself,"_ the young child had said one day in the kitchen, reaching for the tool that had been offered to him. _“I’m careful.”_

His father had smiled in response. _“Oh, I know. That’s not why I turn it.”_ Answering his son’s puzzled look, he murmured playfully, _“I turn it so that_ I _don’t cut_ you.”

The child had giggled.

At the time, he’d believed that his father would never hurt him, not even accidentally. The man was very good with handling knives. They were an extension of his own hands, and he never dropped them or made any mistakes with them at all. That was because he used them everyday at work to cut people open for life-saving surgeries, which Malcolm used to brag about at school.

No longer puzzled, the boy had taken the utensil by the handle before returning to the dining table to saw at his dinner with it.

That day, he'd finally figured out why his daddy always turned the knife around. He did it because it was a polite thing to do. It showed he had 'manners,’ like how shaking someone’s hand showed them you were a ‘nice young man,’ and how saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and 'sir' or 'ma’am’ showed someone you had a very important thing called ‘respect.’

But what his daddy did with the knife was even more than that. It was a display of peace, conveying, ‘I do not intend to hurt you.’

In Malcolm's young, imaginative mind, it might have also been a display of 'responsibility,' like in the movies when kings bestowed a big fancy sword to their knights --handle outward, their palms underneath the flat side of the blade-- and told them that they had to use the weapon for _good_ only; like saving a princess who was locked in a dungeon by cutting away the ropes around her, or slaying fire-breathing dragons!

Maybe some part of that silly fantasy embedded itself in the boy's subconscious. Maybe even in his adulthood, that concept of heroism still glowed in Malcolm’s heart like an ember, buried beneath the charred ruins of a castle.

But his father hadn't done that with the pocket knife. Straight out of the packaging, the blade was safely hidden in the handle, so there was no need to turn it around. His father had simply handed it to the boy after purchasing it at a gas station in New Jersey during their last camping trip --the one they’d taken a few weeks ago, just the two of them.

Malcolm had struggled to remember a lot of things recently --ever since he had that nightmare a few nights ago-- but he remembered most of _that_ camping trip. _That_ trip had been fun, except…

He didn’t want to think about that ‘except’ part.

The child concentrated on his pocket knife, opening it to expose the small blade and closing it to hide the small blade. It seamlessly transitioned from being harmless to being dangerous with just one motion of his hand. Lost in thought, he stared at it while he tried to navigate through the maze of his memory, which had been veiled by a strange fog. When the fog became too difficult to see through and he couldn’t venture any deeper into his head, his thoughts escaped to a fantasy land with burning castles and brave knights and princesses in dungeons.

In _boxes._

He furrowed his brow and stopped fiddling with the pocket knife, watching the steel gleam under the warm street lights while trying _hard_ to remember more about that nightmare.

“Your dad buy you that?”

Malcolm looked up at his father’s friend, John, who had just finished loading some camping gear into the trunk of the Whitlys’ new station wagon.

“Yeah.”

John pushed the door shut, whisked out his own knife, and turned to lean his back against the car, smirking. “Everybody needs a good knife. You never know when it’ll come in handy.” He played with the fixed blade before sheathing the hunting tool back into the leather scabbard on his hip.

Malcolm watched him, suddenly feeling that his pocket knife was comically small in comparison. “My dad says that, too,” he murmured.

“Smart guy.”

A moment of silence passed between them as Malcolm continued to stare down at his father’s gift.

“Can I see it?” John asked.

“Yeah.”

The boy let his muddled thoughts go, for the most part (though he never really let them go these days,) and turned the knife around with a smooth, practiced motion of his ten-year-old wrist, holding it out to the man like his father always held one out to him; in a display of respect and peace, conveying _, ‘I don't intend to hurt you.'_

John took the tool and brought it in front of his bearded face, examining it as he ran his thumb along the edge of the blade. "That’s a sharp one,” he murmured approvingly. His eyes mischievously twinkled as he tipped the point of the knife in the boy’s direction and warned him, "It'll cut ya if you're not careful."

"I'm careful,” Malcolm murmured, burrowing his fists in his coat pockets. It was chilly on the street. It would be even more frigid in the mountains.

“Good,” John snickered with a low hum. His crow-footed eyes gazed down at the child, studying him and committing everything about him to memory --as if it were the last time he’d see the kid. An acidic fondness coated the man’s drawling tone as he muttered, “Just like your dad.”

Speak of the devil.

At the top of the stoop, the front door to the house opened. Malcolm calmly turned around as warm light bathed across his back, casting a Malcolm-shaped shadow over John’s body --nearly covering him completely.

Malcolm’s father stood in the doorway; a dimly-lit figure silhouetted by the lamp in the foyer. Malcolm’s little sister hugged the man’s side like an oversized koala cub, her sleepy head resting on his shoulder with her arms slung around him and her legs limply straddling him. The patriarch supported her with one strong arm, gently swaying and encouraging the girl to wave her little hand at her brother to tell him ‘goodbye.’

Ainsley tiredly obliged, and lazily waved ‘goodbye’ to her big brother.

Malcolm waved back, just as tired.

The shadow behind him asked, “That your sister?”

“Yeah,” Malcolm answered, still looking ahead to his family.

While pressing a kiss against the girl’s head and murmuring in her ear, his father stepped back into the house with Ainsley to put her to bed. The man quietly guided the door shut, and the light from the foyer slowly wiped away, leaving Malcolm and John to their privacy beneath the feeble glow of the orange streetlights.

Malcolm wished he could go back to sleep, too --as long as he didn’t have any more nightmares.

Maybe it was best if he didn’t go back to sleep.

“Huh,” John hummed thoughtfully. He folded up Malcolm’s pocket knife and then tossed the tool back to the boy. Malcolm caught it against his chest and looked down at it, eager to fiddle with it again and concentrate on his slow-churning thoughts.

“I didn’t know you had a sister.”

Malcolm glanced up at him with mild confusion. “How come?”

“Your dad never talks about her,” John answered, pulling a cigarette out of his greasy, oil-stained pocket to light it near his lips. “Only you.”

A tiny fire glowed within the cigarette. Rancid casino smoke cycled through the man’s lungs before he exhaled it into the Manhattan air. Playfully acting as though he was fed-up with hearing the child’s praise, he chuckled and drawled, _“Allll_ the time.”

Malcolm allowed a faint smile to appear on his own lips, an expression that rarely crossed his face lately. It made him somewhat glad to hear that his dad bragged about him as often as he bragged about his dad. But… something didn’t feel right, and that small happiness fizzled out as quickly as it was kindled.

Though Malcolm’s smile was the first to fall, John’s followed soon after.

The man tipped his head back, resting it against the glass window of the station wagon behind him, and breathed fire into the night sky.

* * *

“John was there that night?”

Malcolm nodded, his eyes unblinking as he drilled his gaze through his father.

Dr. Whitly snickered. “Are you saying he rode in the car with us?” The idea was one to laugh at.

“No. He had his own vehicle,” Malcolm corrected.

“Did he?” Martin quizzed. “What was it?”

The profiler answered without hesitation. “It was a green truck. But it wasn’t in front of the house. You had him park down the street, maybe even around the corner,” he theorized, adding, “Because you were careful.”

Martin’s grin wavered, but it did not fall. He reluctantly conceded a friendly, “Alright,” and didn’t argue the matter.

The profiler then asked a scathing question --one which he already knew the answer to. “Why was John there that night?”

“He was helping us pack,” Dr. Whitly answered simply.

“Pack _what?”_ Malcolm hissed. He wanted his father to _say it._ To _admit it._

Dr. Whitly saw the trap he was ensnared in, and tried to casually answer, “Well, all the… _tools_ and _supplies,”_ but he knew he was caught.

Still, he would not say it.

So Malcolm had to.

The profiler snapped, “And The Girl.” His eyes burned with hatred. “He was there to help you with The Girl.”

Martin ran his tongue over his teeth, but kept his smile. “Do you really think we loaded an entire _body_ into that car, with you _right there?_ Do you think I’d risk you finding her?” His tone was almost mocking as he smirked, “You said it yourself, son, I’m careful.”

“You’re a _monster,”_ Malcolm seethed.

Martin’s voice rose as he firmly protested, “I did _not_ have a body in the back of that car, Malcolm.” His voice calmed again as he spread his hands and offered an alternative scenario for the sleuth to consider. “What about John’s truck?”

“She wasn’t in John’s _truck,_ she was in the _car,”_ the profiler vehemently argued.

The Girl In The Box had been _right there_ \--just behind their shoulders, for the entire duration of that hours-long drive. It sickened him.

“I _found_ the station wagon, Dr. Whitly. I _saw_ the hooks.”

Dr. Whitly patiently explained, “I didn’t install those. Those came with the car.” He then pointed out, “You didn’t _find_ John’s truck, did you? You only found the wagon.”

This was true.

Malcolm had gone to the ends of the Earth to find out what had happened to that green truck, but he didn’t have a photo of it, like he had of the station wagon. He didn’t have a make, model, plate number, estimated manufactured date, nothing. That missing piece of the puzzle relentlessly gnawed at the consultant’s mind.

Dr. Whitly’s face lit up with a devious excitement. “Oooh, that’s too bad,” he crooned. “If you thought _my_ car was full of skeletons… you would have _loved_ to poke around in John’s.”

Malcolm ignored his father’s cruel, dark jab. “We found residue of blood in the wagon’s trunk.”

“Oh yeah?” Dr. Whitly smiled cheerfully, inquiring, “Whose blood?”

As if it could have been a number of people's.

Malcolm didn’t answer.

The lab had been unable to identify the faded sample.

Martin grinned, offering, “Are you sure it wasn’t that of a doe?”

“It was human,” Malcolm glowered. That much, the lab had been able to discern.

“Sure it was,” Dr. Whitly nodded, pretending to believe his very imaginative offspring for the sake of making him happy. The man sighed as he stood up from his desk chair with a creak of his aging joints. “Whatever fits your… very _biased_ and _limited_ narrative, son.”

Malcolm kept his mouth shut, confining his emotions within.

Science did not lie. Science, unlike some people, told the truth.

Dr. Whitly picked up a book he’d been reading before the profiler had stormed into his cell. As his father tucked the item back into his bookshelf, Malcolm bitterly reminisced, “I knew something was wrong. I knew you were hiding something that night.”

“No, you didn’t,” Martin chuckled. “You didn’t suspect a damned thing.” He caressed the spine of the book --now slotted beside all the others in his collection-- before smiling over at the boy. “You were so excited to go on that trip, you were _jumping_ for _joy.”_

Malcolm was stung by that comment. “That’s not true!”

“Oh, yes it is. You just don’t _want_ it to be.” Martin’s voice flowed gently, almost empathetically. But his smile gave away the act, allowing some of his cruelty to leak through his charm. “You’d feel so _guilty,_ remembering the truth; that you were as happy as a clam, and completely oblivious to what we were up to.”


	5. The Departure

The boy was all packed and ready to go. Martin placed the child’s knapsack beside his own large duffel bag and murmured, “You got your knife?”

“Yup!” The child held it up to display it proudly, then fiddled with it, infatuated with its gleaming beauty.

Martin smiled down at him with equal infatuation and pride. “Good.” He laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder and suggested, “Why don’t you go outside and show it off to John?”

“Okay!” Malcolm chirped as he bounded for the front door. 

“Quietly,” Martin reminded him. The boy obeyed and gingerly shut the door behind him.

Martin left the bags in the foyer and went to the kitchen, where some other equipment waited on the countertop. He untied his leather knife case, rolled it open across the countertop like a pirate’s map, and examined the array of blades tucked neatly within it, ensuring that each tool was accounted for and in good condition to use.

“Daddy?”

He whirled around to spot a girl at the base of the stairs, clad in a frilly pink nightgown.

“Ainsley, what are you doing out of bed?” he whispered, stepping over to her.

She rubbed her eyes with one balled fist. “Where’s Malcolm?”

“He’s outside,” Martin answered, crouching to place his hands on either side of her fragile rib cage before hoisting her up.

Allowing herself to be picked up like a doll, she matched against his side naturally and curled her fingers over the sleek texture of his rain jacket before changing her hold to the soft flannel of his plaid shirt beneath it. “Are you leaving?” she asked.

“Yes.” He secured her to him with one arm, his hip a perch for her to sit on. “The whole  _ point, _ sweetheart, was to leave without waking you and your mother,” he murmured kindly, his voice hushed and gentle. He used his free hand to brush her wispy baby blonde hair out of her face. Then he brought her into the kitchen.

“Can I come with you?”

“No, darling,” he chuckled at the thought and then explained, “This is a _ guys’  _ weekend.”

She appeared very dispirited, but he knew her sleepiness played a role in her dejected mood. “You get to go to the Hamptons with your mother, remember?” he reminded her sweetly, intending to cheer her.

“I don’t wanna go to the Hamptons,” she mumbled with a miserable lethargy, resting her head against his shoulder and curling her small hand tighter around the collar of his button-up shirt. He smelled like Christmas; like pine and warm gingerbread and sugar cookies. “I wanna go with you and Malcolm.”

“Maybe next time,” he suggested.

His empty proposal didn’t do the trick of assuaging her sorrow. The child scrunched her face and wrestled with a choked heart, at risk of feeling her sadness deeply enough for it to rupture an underground spring of tears.

Martin swayed with her, murmuring soothing things against her forehead. He distracted her from her pang of rejection by showing her his collection of knives, explaining the tasks that each one was best at performing. The smorgasbord of cutlery included one that was best at slicing through skin, one that was best at carving through muscle, one was best at severing ligaments and tendons, and one was best at sawing through small bones.

She was comforted by his warm, low voice as he bestowed some of his vast knowledge to her --which was usually exclusively reserved for her older brother. Ainsley gazed at the buffet of tools, admiring all their different sizes and shapes while lying on his shoulder and growing more drowsy with each steady rotation of his body.

“Now, let’s put you back to bed, okay?”

The brief spell of magic was over.

“Can I say bye to Malcolm first?” she asked.

After a moment, he allowed, “Alright. And then straight to bed.”

She nodded into his shoulder, agreeing to the terms of their compromise.

Martin brought her back into the foyer, then opened the door to reveal John and Malcolm by the station wagon.

They were smiling at each other.

John was kneeling to show Malcolm his own hunting knife, comparing the two blades. Malcolm was mesmerized, as he always was when he learned something new. That familiar grin of wonder was strung across his young face --still fringed with the last remnants of his baby fat, which would melt away like butter before long. His body would thin out and stretch skywards and he would begin his transition into a man like a caterpillar destined to endure a rigorous metamorphosis.

It would happen all too quickly, Martin knew. His son would grow. And grow. And grow, until one day he’d blink, and the boy would erupt into a full-fledged butterfly, with great big brilliant wings that would carry him away to far-off places.

Ainsley would do the same. She’d fill a shapely mold similar to that of her mother, and she’d probably inherit a large portion of the woman’s fiery personality --abandoning her current sweet, bubbly demeanor.

Malcolm was destined for greatness-- a very specific greatness-- but Martin was sure Ainsley would do great things too, one day. Whatever they may be.

Little Malcolm turned his beaming smile in their direction and enthusiastically waved.

Ainsley was already half asleep on his shoulder, so Martin took the girl’s wrist and lightly bobbed her floppy hand to return her brother’s wave.

Malcolm giggled, humored by the puppetry.

John smiled at them, too.

Malcolm turned back to his new friend to continue to pick his brain about the hunting knife, and John happily obliged to answer his questions.

They were getting along wonderfully.

Martin kissed the side of Ainsley’s head and carried her back inside, quietly closing the door before carrying her upstairs. He made no sound as he swept through the hall and into her room like a phantom, carefully depositing her into her bed and tucking her in.

Her pink princess night light glowed at the base of the wall, but its meager light was briefly interrupted by his passing shadow. The translucent, flower-patterned curtains that were drawn over her window reached out in shy pursuit of his passing figure as if they were begging him not to go.

As he left, Martin passed by his own bedroom --only to ensure that his wife was still fast asleep. She was; her silk eye mask blindfolding her face, her auburn hair sprawled across her pillow, and a feminine, faint snore trickling out from her open lips.

She was beautiful. But more importantly, she was entirely unaware.

Downstairs, Martin rolled up his knife case, double-checked that he hadn’t forgotten anything from the basement,  _ locked _ the basement, ensured that nothing suspicious had been left out for anyone to find in the morning, then finally gathered all the bags from the kitchen and foyer before heading outside.

John accepted everything he handed to him.

“Got everything you need?” Martin smiled at his son.

“Yep!” Malcolm confirmed.

“Good boy. Go ahead and get in the car, I’ll be right there.”

Malcolm gladly obeyed, skipping for the passenger door as if there were bouncy balls in the soles of his shoes.

Martin enjoyed watching the boy’s excitement. He turned his smile to John, asking with a similar paternal warmth, “And what about you? Got everything?”

“Yup,” John sighed. There was much less energy in his voice than in Malcolm’s. But there was a subtle, pleasant smirk under that untrimmed mustache. John was looking forward to this trip too --for far different reasons.

They held each other’s gaze for a moment, conversing with their eyes.

“Did he see anything?” Martin murmured quietly.

John shook his head with a slow, peaceful blink.

“Good,” Martin smiled.

He aimed that smile through the window of the trunk.

Everything was going exactly as planned.


	6. The Car

In the passenger seat, Malcolm continued playing with his knife. He could hear the adults’ muffled voices outside the car. Something inside his sluggishly-pounding heart told him that he should try to listen to what they were saying; that he might be able to pick out some important detail from their discussion. He strained to translate the murmurs into coherent words, and briefly wondered if he could roll down the window-- just a crack-- to break the seemingly sound-proof barrier between them.

But he didn’t roll down the window. Maybe he was too nervous. Maybe he was too numb. Maybe he merely, foolishly, dismissed his intuition.

He kept staring down at his knife, waiting for his dad to join him in the car.

It was a brand new car. It was nice. Wood adorned the dashboard and the interior sides of the doors, just like it did on the outside. He noticed it was of a similar grain to the pocket knife in his hands. Malcolm looked around the cab, his eyes scanning the levers and buttons around him, which he didn’t yet know how to operate. One day, he’d know. One day, his father would teach him.

He’d promised.

Malcolm turned his head to cast his surveying gaze over the skeletal-thin steering wheel and the empty driver’s seat that loomed beside him. He kept turning his head, twisting around to look at the cargo John had loaded in the back of the wagon. It was no wonder why it was called a ‘wagon.’ The rear storage compartment extended far behind the front seats, capable of fitting plenty of large things in it. Whatever bags John had packed into the vehicle didn’t look like bags in that moment. They just looked like dark shapes with gentle sloping crests and dips, like a mountain range.

The longer Malcolm stared into the cavernous space, the more he could make out one particular, large, cohesive shape. A tarp --no, a blanket-- lying over some more... bags?

A shadow passed over the length of the car. 

Malcolm faced his body forward and sat up in his seat as the driver’s side door opened.

His father slipped into the cab and shut the door behind him, announcing, “All aboard!” like a jovial train conductor. “Ready to go?”

Malcolm nodded without a smile.

His father beamed at him before he placed his duffel bag and Malcolm's knapsack in the space between their seats, sealing off the gap that Malcolm had previously peered through. The bags settled like soft boulders that had fallen to block the mouth of a dark cave.

“Isn’t John coming with us?” the boy asked.

“He’s driving separately,” Martin answered distractedly, ensuring that the bags were fixed in their place and wouldn’t topple over during the drive. “He’s got a whole ‘nother load in his truck.”

“A load of what?”

Martin smirked at the boy as he faced forward again. “More camping stuff.” Sweeping one last glance around the interior of the car, he turned the key and asked, “Didn’t forget anything, did you? Last chance.”

Malcolm felt as if he had forgotten a lot. The trouble was, he didn’t know  _ what _ he’d forgotten. But his father wasn’t talking about his foggy memories. He was talking about physical objects. The child shook his head, staring down at the pocket knife in his lap with a dejected pout on his face.

“Seat belt.”

_ That _ was one object Malcolm had forgotten. He set his knife down and fastened the belt over his chest while his father did the same to himself. After Malcolm’s buckle had clicked, his father guided the car away from the curb.

Malcolm looked out at the side mirror attached to the passenger door, watching his house shrink even though the mirror said ‘objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.’ That must have been a lie, because his house appeared very, very far away, even before they got up to speed. Soon, his home was gone entirely, and all he could see were other houses and storefronts as they passed through the labyrinthian city.

The boy also saw a pair of headlights in the mirror, ‘closer than they appeared.’ The headlights followed their station wagon like the glowing eyes of a monster in the night, chasing them through the darkness. Malcolm stared at them. They did not leave, not even when the headlights of other cars swarmed and camouflaged them on the busy highways. The wagon weaved through other vehicles and merged onto the interstate, but those headlights always found their way back to their spot, just a short distance behind them.

Malcolm eventually turned his attention to the road ahead of them, watching everything fly past them through the window of the rectangular windshield. They passed through a few tunnels, like portals taking them to a new domain. The landscape around them changed from towering buildings to clustered suburbs and then to dark forests. They left society and civilization behind, escaping to another world; a world that was comprised of a secluded, solitary, uninhabited wilderness. A world with no skyscrapers, no buses or trains, no mommy or Ainsley. No people at all; except for him, his dad, and his dad’s friend.

The wagon’s headlights weakly bathed the road in front of them, only able to reach so far. They could illuminate the leaves of the bushes beside them and the painted lines on the midnight road a few dozen feet in front of them, but not much else.

Malcolm’s keen eyes drooped.

“You can sleep if you’re tired, son.”

Malcolm didn’t know if he could. He didn’t know if he  _ should. _ He felt as if he needed to stay awake, to keep his eyes open in case… in case….

He didn’t know what case. But he felt as if he should remain vigilant for something. He feared that if he closed his eyes, he’d miss something. Something important. He had to stay awake. He was too scared to fall asleep, anyway. He was scared that he’d have another nightmare again if he closed his eyes. A nightmare so terrible and vivid that he wouldn’t be able to tell if it was a dream.

Just like last time.

Worse, what if it would be a nightmare he couldn’t wake up from? Things were good now. Things were quiet, and peaceful, and safe, now. He wanted things to stay like this, even if it meant he’d never fall asleep again. And if  _ this _ was the dream, and the  _ nightmares _ were the ones that were real… then he didn’t ever want to wake up.

“It’s alright, son. I’m here. You can sleep.”

Malcolm hesitated to accept his comfort. “What if we hit a deer?”

They wouldn’t see it until it was  _ right there, _ and Malcolm could perfectly imagine the  _ crash  _ of the impact and the  _ screech  _ of the tires and the shattered glass of the windows and the harsh  _ snap  _ of the seat belt around his chest as he’d lurch forward.

They’d be fine. A little bruised up, a little shaken. Their car was bigger than a deer. Their car was made of metal, and their car was surely much tougher than it looked. His father wouldn’t have bought a flimsy car. His father could easily wrestle the wagon under control again, manipulating the fishtailing swerves to straighten them out, or maybe spin them around to perform a fancy halt like in the action movies. His father would be able to see through the blood that would splatter across whatever would be left of their windshield.

Yes, they would be fine, Malcolm believed.

But the deer....

Malcolm feared for the would-be roadkill far more than he feared for themselves.

“We won’t hit a deer,” his father chuckled, as if it was as rare as being bitten by a shark or struck by lighting.

“But what if we do?” Malcolm fretted.

“Then we’ll strap it onto the roof and cook it for breakfast!”

That wasn’t funny to the ten-year-old.

Malcolm had seen a dead deer before. He’d seen its brown, dog-like eyes glossed over and rolled into the back of its head. He’d seen its long slender tongue lolling out of its petite mouth. He’d seen its spindly legs stiff with rigor mortis --its tawny fur stiff as well, discolored and bruised with blood.

Something always seemed to  _ happen  _ to a creature when it died. Something  _ real  _ about it seemed to leave. Maybe it was their ‘soul,’ but Malcolm hadn’t decided yet if he believed in ‘souls,’ or if they were just stuff of storybooks (or religious books, which sometimes seemed to be storybooks for adults.) Regardless of  _ what  _ it was or  _ why  _ it happened, it happened all the same. Creatures always seemed to look  _ fake  _ when there wasn’t any life inside of them. They looked taxidermied even before being taxidermied.

The first time he’d seen a carcass on the side of the highway, he’d been in one of those toddler seats in the back of their Lincoln, the family car that Mother often hired  _ other  _ people to drive them around in. His father didn’t like to be driven around like his mother did. His father liked to drive himself, and drive his family, every chance he could.

When the young child had seen the collapsed, broken animal on the side of the road, he’d innocently asked,  _ “What happened to that deer?”  _

_ “A car hit him,”  _ his father had answered truthfully.

If his mother had been there at the time, she would have said the deer was just ‘sleeping.’ That fib had later fooled Ainsley when she’d asked the same question about a grossly-flattened raccoon, but it never fooled Malcolm. He was too smart to fall for that, even at that age. Malcolm could recognize and point out death long before he even knew what death was.

When a creature slept, they didn’t look  _ fake. _ But when a creature died, it somehow lost all of its truth.

_ “Why?” _ Malcolm had asked. _ “Why did a car hit him?” _

_ “I’m sure it didn’t  _ mean to, _ son,”  _ his father had chuckled.  _ “It just happens, sometimes,”  _ the man explained. “ _ When people aren’t careful.” _

Little Malcolm had thought that was a very sad thing, to accidentally kill something because of ‘not being careful.’

_ “But it’s not  _ just  _ the car’s fault,” _ his father had advocated.  _ “The deer,” _ he added,  _ “should have been more careful as well.” _

Now, Malcolm stared ahead at the dark road that stretched endlessly in front of the station wagon. Each smooth curve of the pavement revealed no beacons of any kind in the distance. No street lights appeared to illuminate the way. No moon graced the land with a milky glow. Even the blackness of  _ outer space _ had more visibility than this road, Malcolm thought.

“Don’t hit a deer, dad,” he asked. “Please?”

“I don’t  _ plan  _ to,” his father chuckled.

Malcolm did not close his eyes, believing that they had some sort of super power to spot an innocent creature long before his father’s eyes could. If Malcolm stayed vigilant --if he served as a second pair of eyes-- then maybe he could call attention to the deer in time to save it.

He strained his tired eyes, staring dutifully into the abyssal stretch ahead of them.

After a few moments, Martin twisted a lever beside the steering wheel. The beams of light in front of their vehicle surged in strength, allowing them to see well beyond what they could see before. The secondary lights had flicked on. The ones meant to light the way during the darkest of journeys.

The ‘brights.’

“Does that make you feel better?” Martin asked.

“Yeah,” Malcolm blinked, grateful to relieve his eyes. “Thanks, dad.”

“Now, go to sleep,” his father murmured. “I’ll wake you when we get to the cabin.”

Malcolm curled against the side of the door, folding his arm beneath his head to use as a pillow.

Slowly, he fell asleep.


	7. The Fire

The night was dark the last time they’d gone camping too. But the stars had been out, and a fire had glowed in the center of their campsite. Malcolm’s father had started the fire from nothing, first digging a shallow pit, then building a ring of stone, and finally collecting dry leaves and dead grass to use as tinder, along with twigs to use as kindling. After that, all he needed was a rod of flint.

And, of course, a knife.

A baby flame was born from the sparks of his strikes. Malcolm watched his father kneel down to steadily blow on the ignited tinder, breathing life into it and giving it the oxygenated fuel it needed to grow. And grow. And grow, until there was a fully-fledged, crackling fire before them, licking at the teepee of logs that housed it.

_ Burning castles. _

“Woah. That’s so cool!” Malcolm grinned, hugging his knees as he sat in his oversized rain jacket. He was certain that he’d witnessed some form of sorcery. Tricks had always been his father’s favorite flavor of magic. “You’re like a dragon!”

“I am, aren’t I?” his father smiled. Ripe apples appeared on his bearded cheeks before he flashed his teeth to deliver his best dragon growl. Malcolm enjoyed it, giggling.

The campfire made for great hot dog roasting and s’mores toasting. As the vast, lonely night settled over them, they remained sheltered from the darkness by light, warmth, and laughter --which filled the sky just as thoroughly as the stars.

In moments like those, it seemed that they’d never run out of things to talk about. Malcolm’s insatiable curiosity complemented Martin’s boundless knowledge very well. Malcolm never ran out of questions, and Martin never held any answers out of his reach. He poured everything he knew into his son, until the information swelled in the child’s head and he couldn’t accept any more revelations until he’d taken the time necessary to process everything he’d learned.

In moments like those, every door within his father’s library of life experiences was open, with a big ‘welcome’ mat lying in front of each entrance. There were no skeletons tucked away in dark closets --at least none that Malcolm knew of, at the time. None that he could find, yet. At that point, he hadn’t thought it was necessary to search for any.

In moments like those, Malcolm was certain that there was nothing he didn’t know about his father. There were no lies, no smoke and mirrors, no deceit. No stranger hiding beneath the surface of his best friend. No villains masquerading as heroes.  In moments like those, his father was not a shadowy figure stalking through a blurred nightmare.  In moments like those, he was just his dad, and Malcolm truly loved him more than anything.

It had been difficult for future Malcolm to remember moments like those, not because he’d ever forgotten them, but because…

They  _ hurt. _

Sometimes he preferred to remember only the terrible moments. Those hurt too, but he found that they somehow hurt much less than the wonderful moments.

When the time to sleep had arrived, the fire was left to simmer to itself in a slow, self-destructing death as it was starved of any additional food source. Into the tent they receded, and while little Malcolm wriggled into his child-sized sleeping bag, his father rolled up the fly, exposing the speckled night sky through the mesh of the roof. Side by side, they lied on their backs and gazed at the stars.

Martin knew every single constellation in the sky, and he pointed out each and every one to his son. Malcolm had never fathomed that there could be so much hidden in plain sight. He was awed by the occasional shooting star and the twinkling satellites that moved across the sky. He was enamored with the distant river that appeared in the blackness --the Milky Way.

“It looks like someone spilled a bottle of glitter across the sky!” the child gasped.

“Yeah. Kinda.”

“What do  _ you _ think it looks like?” Malcolm asked. The fabric of his sleeping bag made a  _ swish  _ sound as he rolled over to look at the dark silhouette of the man lying beside him.

“I think…” his father drawled, lifting one hand to reach for the galaxy. “It looks like someone took a great big sword, and slashed the sky in two.” His arm made one slow sweeping motion as he traced that line. “Maybe a Norse giant,” he enticed, his voice donning a theatrical flair. “Or a Greek god.”

With another  _ swish _ of his sleeping bag, Malcolm rolled onto his back to scrutinize the Milky Way. It was darker in the middle, appearing deep, like a gash. And it was lighter on each edge, like frayed celestial skin. “You’re right. It does look like that,” Malcolm mused. However, his face was distorted with confusion. “But why would someone want to cut the sky open?”

“Because they can,” Martin theorized with a smirk.

Malcolm thought about that, but he did not understand the reasoning. He couldn’t imagine wanting to tear something in two, just because he could. A piece of paper, sure, but the whole sky? The whole _ universe? _ He thought it was rather silly, and rather sad --maybe even  _ wrong-- _ to damage something as special as the universe, just for the fun of it.

Then it occurred to him that maybe some people thought the universe wasn’t special at all. Maybe some people thought it was just as insignificant as a piece of paper. That puzzled him, but he supposed it was one of those ‘difficult concepts’ that he would learn more about later, when he was older.

“Tell me a story,” the boy asked, “about a Norse giant, or a Greek god.”

He shifted further down in his sleeping bag, bunching the loose edge of the shiny material around his chin. They’d brought no books with them, so his father would have to make one up.

But he was good at that. He was very, very good at that.

“How about I tell you a story... about an eldritch monster?” his father suggested.

“An  _ eldritch _ monster?” Malcolm echoed, intrigued by the new word.

“Mhmm,” his father hummed with a nod. “A very  _ scary  _ monster that lives in the woods.”

“What does it look like?” Malcolm whispered in the night.

“Nobody knows,” his father whispered back.

“How come?”

“Nobody’s ever seen it.” Martin amended, “Except for the people it kills, but they don’t live to tell the tale.”

_ “Nobody?”  _ Malcolm emphasized.

“Nobody,” his father confirmed. “It lives in the darkness, and the darkness makes it strong.” He continued, “It sneaks up on people when they’re not looking. It  _ snatches  _ them, when they least expect it.”

“What does it do to them?” Malcolm worried.

“No one knows. All they know is it makes people...  _ disappear,” _ Martin breathed. _ “ _ One by one. Gone without a trace. Never to be found again.”

Malcolm thought about that for a while. Then he asked, “How do you stop the monster?”

“You can’t.”

Malcolm furrowed his brow. “What do you mean, you can’t?” he demanded, nearly offended.

“I mean, you can’t,” his father eased patiently. “No one’s ever stopped it, and no one ever will.”

“Someone will,” Malcolm declared confidently. “I know it.”

“How do you stop something you can’t see?”

Malcolm thought about that for a while, too. “You... hear it. And feel it.”

“Hmm, and then what do you do?”

“You….” Malcolm paused to wrack his brain again. His father had said it lived in darkness, and that darkness made it strong. “You shine a light on it!” the boy gasped eagerly. “A really  _ bright _ light! And it blinds the monster!”

“Ooh, good idea, but I don’t think that would work on this monster.”

Malcolm was dismayed. “Why not?”

His father smirked in the darkness. “Because this monster lives in the light, too.”

Malcolm blinked, befuddled. “How?”

“It hides inside people.” Martin’s finger came to rest over the boy’s chest, then it moved to his own. “Like you and me.”

Malcolm didn’t like the thought of that.

His father’s finger settled over him again, lightly burrowing to poke through the child’s sleeping bag. “It buries itself deep, deep down within us.”

Malcolm focused on the feeling of pressure upon his chest. His father’s finger was like a penetrating harpoon, or an arrow. He imagined it being the monster, trying to embed itself in his heart. “How do you know if it’s in you?”

“You don’t,” Martin answered simply. He released the pressure of his finger and rested his hand upon the boy’s sleeping bag, relaxed and harmless. “It’s very good at hiding.”

The man continued, “One moment, you’re lying in a tent, looking up at the stars…” He turned his head to look up through the mesh ceiling above them. Malcolm followed his gaze, doing the same. “And the next thing you know…. You’re  _ gone!” _

The fabric of Malcolm's sleeping back  _ swished _ as it was whisked up over his head.

Malcolm let out a muffled scream and struggled, but his father’s hand kept the material pinned tightly over him. A moment later, Malcolm was allowed to thrash free. The child’s gasp instantly morphed into laughter. Beside him, Martin chuckled too.

With a helplessly wide grin, the boy pushed the loose sleeping bag away from his face. “Dad, that’s not funny!” he whined through a weary giggle. He should have seen that coming. It was just like his father to get him like that, at the height of his story, when Malcolm was fully immersed in his imagination. Malcolm had fallen for it, yet again, and it frustrated him. One of these days, he was determined not to fall for his father’s tricks.

“Was that story too scary for you?” Martin teased.

“No,” Malcolm protested stubbornly. He turned on his side to face away from his father, pouting slightly. “Just  _ dumb.” _

His father laughed, but he ceased his fables and tricks. He also turned on his side to face away from the boy, toward the entrance of the tent. “Goodnight, son.”

Malcolm didn’t remember if he mumbled a response. He was too busy thinking about that silly story. He stared at the wall of the tent, noticing every subtle dance of shadow on its paper-thin membrane.

There were shapes in the darkness. Ebbing and changing shapes. Shapes nearly-impossible to make out, even if he strained his eyes and absorbed every drop of meager light he could through his dilated pupils.

_ ‘How do you stop something you can’t see?’ _

_ ‘You... hear it.’ _

He listened to the wind faintly rustle the pines around them. It was a rare, sporadic sound, and it did not satisfy his curiosity and wandering imagination. His brain kept telling him there must be something more, out there. There must be something else. Something living. Breathing. Stalking. Searching. Malcolm listened for it, but all he heard was a void.

_ ‘And feel it.’ _

All he could feel was a tickling coldness on his exposed face, and his heart beating faster and faster against his ribs --its rate increasing the longer he laid there thinking to himself about all of the terrible things that he couldn't see. All of the terrible things that fed off the darkness.

After a while, the boy spoke up. “Dad?” Although his voice was a whisper, it felt too loud.

His father answered him with a low, sleepy hum of, “Mhm?”

Malcolm didn’t respond, too embarrassed to say anything. He knew he was far too old to fear monsters.

After a moment, his father rolled over in his sleeping bag. “What is it, son?”

Malcolm remained facing away from him, worried that his father would see his fear if he turned towards him. “Are…” He struggled to keep his voice strong. “Are there… any... bears, or anything, out here?”

“Wull, yeah, there’s bears. Black bears. You know that.”

Malcolm did know that. He wasn’t afraid of the bears. He just wanted to use them as an example --a placeholder-- because the thing that he was really scared of was a very childish thing to be scared of.

“Are they… are they gonna come to our camp?” Malcolm mumbled.

His father chuckled, settling on his side again. “No, son.”

Malcolm was still nervous. That story was fresh in his mind, and his imaginative mind had a bad habit of embellishing his thoughts. It was difficult to control his thoughts when they ran away from him so quickly, ever eager to explore dark places despite another part of himself begging them to stop.

“Black bears are scared of humans,” his father murmured. “Big scaredy cats, that’s all they are. Grizzlies are the ones you want to worry about. But there's no grizzlies around here.”

Malcolm’s thoughts circled around those words. One of them in particular.  _ Cats. _

“What about… mountain lions?” he asked, finding a new placeholder to use. One that was more justifiable to be scared of than both black bears and monsters.

“Yes, there’s cougars,” his father admitted. He reached over to pat the child’s sleeping bag. “But you’re just fine.” 

Malcolm still wasn’t so sure. Cougars weren’t like black bears. Black bears scavenged. Cougars hunted.

He continued studying the thin wall of the tent in front of him, imagining how easily a set of claws could tear through it. Imagining the big cat’s yowling, snarling roar. Imagining an eldritch creature made of nebulous black smoke, who was unstoppable, and who would either kill him or bury itself deep within him. Either way, the next thing he’d know… he’d be gone.

His fear must have been strong enough to be palpable, because his father soon spoke up again. “Malcolm.”

The boy turned around to look at him. His father hadn’t moved. He was still facing the entrance of the tent, his back to him, his eyes probably closed. But he continued, “I’ve got my gun right here. Nothing’s going to hurt you, son.”

Malcolm watched his silhouette, soaking in his words.

“Not even a monster,” his father smiled to himself. “I promise. Alright?”

Malcolm nodded.

“Now go to sleep,” Martin told him. “We have a big day tomorrow.”

* * *

Tomorrow brought the sunlight.

A pan of breakfast sizzled over the rekindled campfire. Malcolm sat in his oversized rain jacket and finished the food on his paper plate. He’d had two servings. Back then, he’d eaten like the growing boy he was. But when his father had asked if he'd like a third helping, Malcolm had instead wondered, “Can I see your gun?”

Martin glanced at him and then smiled. “You’ve seen it before.”

“Can I hold it?” Malcolm asked. He’d been thinking about that gun all night, and wished to analyze it for himself. Maybe it was a special gun, he’d fantasized, with special bullets that could kill monsters. Even invisible eldritch ones.

Martin was happy to fetch it from inside the tent. “Sure you can.”

It was an old Winchester, sleek and of medium length. The stock was fashioned from polished rosewood and the barrel was forged from matte iron. A strip of tanned leather hung from it, similar to a guitar strap. Dr. Whitly carried it with due respect and proper control, even when he handled it casually --always pointing the tip of the barrel up at the sky, or down and away toward some distant earth. With his full brown beard and red checkered shirt, he looked like a true mountain man holding that antique rifle. All he was missing was a coonskin hat.

Martin knelt beside the boy and showed him every piece of the weapon. He taught him how to check that the chamber was empty, and how to load it with rounds by thumbing them into a hole in the side. He taught him how to cock the big lever at the bottom. He taught him how to raise it against his shoulder and how to aim it at a far-away tree and adjust the magnification of the scope.

Most importantly, he told him to, “Keep your finger straight, above the trigger, until you are ready to fire. And only point it at things you are willing to destroy."

Malcolm wasn’t interested in firing the gun. He just wanted to inspect it. “Where’d you get it?” the boy asked, running his hand along the stock to trace the wood grain with his fingers.

After some hesitation, Martin answered, “This was actually...  _ my  _ father’s gun.” 

Malcolm looked up at his dad, intrigued by the mention of a grandfather who was  _ never  _ talked about. “Did he give it to you?”

Martin’s gaze lingered on the Whitly family Winchester as if it was etched with memories. “No. I took it when he died.”

“When did he die?”

“A long, long time ago,” Martin sighed before equipping a masked smile. He picked up the weapon and stood with it.

The child asked one last question. “How did he die?”

Martin slung the leather strap diagonally over his chest. The rifle settled securely against his back, aiming skyward. “He wasn’t careful.”

* * *

After the fire was doused and everything was packed up, they hiked for a few hours to find a new campsite. They came to the top of a hill, where Martin shared a pair of binoculars with his son. Together, they spotted a small gathering of deer in the shallow valley below.

“Woah! Cool!” a bug-eyed Malcolm grinned, adjusting the binoculars on his face to focus on the wild creatures.

“That herd always migrates south this time of year,” Martin murmured, gesturing at the land around them. “They follow the river. It’s the easiest way around the bend, without climbing up over the mountains. They’ll pass right through that ravine this afternoon."

He was mostly talking to himself. Malcolm was still occupied with the binoculars, studying the way the animals stepped through the brush and flicked their long furry ears as they foraged. They chewed with a sideways motion of their jaw, like a cow. The child imagined what it would be like to be a deer, munching on leaves all day and slowly strolling through the forest.

But at his father’s next words, the boy sharply looked up.

“That’s where we’ll set up to hunt.”

Malcolm’s daydreams of peaceful deer life were shattered as if they’d just been shot through with a bullet. He lowered the binoculars, now as heavy as weights in his hands. “Hunt?” 

“Yes,” Martin chuckled at his son’s surprise, stating the obvious, “That’s why we’re up here.”

Malcolm was dumbstruck. Was this another one of his dad’s jokes? 

No. This was no joke.

Malcolm whirled to face his dad with a betrayed expression. “But you told Mom we were just camping!”

Malcolm’s mother didn’t like when his dad went hunting. She thought it was a ‘cruel and disgusting’ sport, and definitely not a sport that her children would ever have ‘anything to do with,’ she’d decreed. Hunting was something Malcolm’s parents argued about sometimes, but his dad had always conceded when it was clear Mother was not going to budge on the matter. Martin had promised her that their son would have no part in it, at least until he was older.

Malcolm  _ wasn’t _ older. He was the same age he’d been the last time they’d had one of those arguments. But clearly, his father wasn’t counting the years. He was counting the days.

“Well, she doesn’t have to know, does she?” Martin prompted playfully.

Malcolm felt uneasy about that. So uneasy, he almost felt queasy. He didn't want to lie to his mom, not about this. He and his father did lie to her sometimes --little things like dessert before dinner or gifts before holidays-- but this was different. This was a  _ big _ thing to lie about, yet his father acted as if it was only a little thing.

For the first time in his ten-year-old life, Malcolm witnessed his dad breaking a promise.

For the first time in his ten-year-old life, Malcolm felt like what his father was doing was  _ wrong. _

His dishonesty was one thing, but the other thing was...

“You’re going to shoot a deer?” the boy mumbled.

Malcolm had never really thought all that deeply about what hunting meant, before. He’d never seen his father do it, first-hand. He’d only seen the meat that his father brought back with him from those trips. But never the antlers. His mother wouldn’t allow trophies of dead creatures in their house. The venison was always stored away in the freezer until it was cooked --when it transformed into something just as common as chicken or steak.

That day, Malcolm  _ did _ think deeply about what hunting meant. It didn’t mean going somewhere and coming back with food. It meant  _ killing a living thing. _ That day, he was personally faced with the fact that his father was going to use his rifle --not to scare away a black bear, or fight off a cougar, or even stop a fictional monster-- but to kill a sweet, innocent deer who only munched on leaves and walked through forests.

_ Knights had to use their weapons for good, only. _

For the first time in his ten-year-old life, Malcolm doubted that his father was a knight, after all.

“No, son. I’m not going to shoot a deer.”

Malcolm almost felt relief, until--

_ “You _ are.”

Malcolm looked up at his father again.

“You're going to make your first kill,” Martin smiled, as if it were a perfectly normal thing to say.

Maybe it was, in hunting language, but that phrase unnerved Malcolm. 

His father turned and began to trek down the side of the hill, toward the ravine that was divided by the river. The ravine which the deer would come through, in due time.

Malcolm watched him go, his eyes fixed to the rifle on his back.

He didn’t want to follow in his footsteps.

Something inside told him  _ not to. _

But, reluctantly, he did.

* * *

Well before dusk, they set up camp overlooking the babbling brook. No fire was built. No hot dogs were roasted. No s’mores were toasted. Martin sat with his back against a tree, the Winchester loaded and at ease in his hands. Relaxed. Harmless. He was silent as his eyes scoured the forest surrounding the river below them.

Malcolm sat beside him, hugging his knees as they waited patiently, all the way through sunset.

The anticipation of the herd’s arrival was killing both of them --for far different reasons.

The more Malcolm thought about holding that weapon in his hands --to actually  _ use _ this time, not just to look at-- and the more Malcolm thought about taking the life of an innocent animal for sport... the more he felt sick. But he didn't tell his dad that. He was too afraid to. He didn’t know which he feared more; disappointing his father, or pulling that trigger. He waited for one or the other to dwindle and become the lesser of the worst-case scenarios in his mind, but neither fear subsided. His surmounting dread stayed inside him, poisoning him, torturing him.

As the vast, lonely night settled over them, darkness descended.

The deer didn’t come.

“Tomorrow,” Martin promised.

Into the tent, they receded.

Malcolm stayed up all night, consumed by a different and much more real terror than he’d been consumed with the night before. His terror filled the sky just as thoroughly as the stars. He stared up at the slashed galaxy above him, gazing through the mesh of the ceiling. He felt trapped beneath a net. Stuck in a web.

He imagined what it might feel like to break through that mesh above him, and to fly up toward those stars. He imagined what it might feel like to leave this tent far behind him. To never have to face the monster he’d meet in the morning.

The monster within.


	8. The Doe

“Malcolm. Wake up.”

The child hadn’t remembered falling asleep. But he also hadn’t remembered a blue hue permeating through the forest, promising the approaching sun.

His father shook him lightly, dispersing the melatonin from his muscles. “Come on.” The man spoke in a hushed and enthusiastic voice as if it was Christmas morning and Santa Claus had brought a surprise for them. “Up, up!”

Groggy from the last tendrils of sleep, Malcolm stumbled out of the tent like a disoriented lamb with an impatient herding dog nipping at his heels. His tired eyes blinked and stretched wider as he saw what was drinking from the river below them.

The deer.

They were close, and they were astonishing. Their slender legs and delicate frame were coated with short, thin, velvety fur. Their eyes were small, dark, and glistening like the starry sky. Their noses were black, round, and wet like an olive. Their lips were white and soft, and their ears were similar to that of a rabbit’s; long and twitchy. They looked like they belonged in a magical elven forest, befriended by fairies and fireflies.

“Quiet,” his father whispered, guiding him to the tree they’d sat against the day before.

Malcolm was too stunned to speak, having trouble discerning if this was a dream, a nightmare, or reality. The answer soon became clear as he was boxed-in by his father’s arms, the boy’s back against his chest, and the rifle placed in his small hands.

“It’s already cocked,” his father murmured silently. “Lift it to your shoulder.”

Malcolm didn’t move, yet the gun raised all the same as his father’s hands guided the Winchester to its proper place. The scope of the rifle took up the boy’s entire vision, magnifying the mystical deer.

“Put your hand here,” his father instructed, already maneuvering the child’s hand for him. Helplessly, Malcolm was forced to hold it, his body manipulated like a puppet.

“Which one?” his father asked.

 _Which one?_ Which one did he want _to kill? None_ of them. Malcolm wanted to kill _none_ of them! He couldn’t bear the thought of taking a life just because he could. A tiny bug, sure, but a deer? A sweet, innocent deer? Malcolm thought it was rather silly, and rather sad _\--definitely_ _wrong--_ to kill something as special as a deer, just for the fun of it. 

Then it occurred to him that maybe some people thought deer weren’t special at all. Maybe some people thought they were just as insignificant as a tiny bug.

Some people, like his dad.

When the boy didn’t respond, Martin suggested, “How ‘bout that one?”

The crosshairs of the reticle centered on a doe, fair and beautiful.

Malcolm’s breath caught in his throat. Meanwhile, he felt his father’s breath exhaling on the back of his neck; steady and warm, like the heat from a fire. It clouded in the cool, misty morning, causing the child’s skin to prickle at its touch.

Curled around the boy, their heads pressed beside each other’s, Martin murmured further instruction. “You want to shoot through both lungs, so it can’t run far. Through the heart, too, if you’re lucky.”

The crosshairs moved with the slightest of adjustments, intersecting over the doe’s shoulder and honing in on her vital organs.

“Right… there.”

The rifle settled, locked into place by his father’s strong arms. Unable to look away from the scope in front of his terrified face, Malcolm stared at those thin red crosshairs. There was a heart beating behind those crosshairs, beneath that cinnamon-colored fur which they focused on.

“Go ahead, son.”

Malcolm didn’t dare move a muscle, yet every muscle inside of him was shaking. Every bone under his skin rattled. He couldn’t stop. He shivered like a leaf, but it wasn’t from the cold. His father’s surrounding body heat roasted him, causing him to sweat and become claustrophobic. He practically vibrated against the stone prison that framed him. The boy was shaking so much, he thought he might explode.

His first tremors.

“Pull the trigger.”

Malcolm realized his finger was already on it, guided down against the iron latch by his father’s thumb.

Finally speaking around the blockage of fright in his throat, Malcolm whispered, “...I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. Pull it.”

Malcolm did not pull it. Instead, he shut his eyes, squeezing them tight and trying to wake up --or go back to sleep-- anything that wasn’t _this._

“Come on, son. You can do it.”

“I don't want to,” he grimaced, carefully slipping his finger away from the iron trigger.

“Why not?”

“I just _don't!”_ he whimpered, finding the volition to squirm back into his father’s chest, trying to get away from the butt of the gun that pinned him there. _“I don’t want to!”_

The deer looked up from the river.

His father tightened his hold around him. “Malcolm, shh!”

 _“Let me go!”_ Malcolm struggled back against him, having reached his limit of discomfort. 

The rifle was tipped skyward again, and moved over to the side. “Alright, shh, you’ll scare the deer.”

That wouldn’t be a bad thing, Malcolm thought. Scaring them was much better than shooting them.

Somewhat freed, the child folded his trembling arms against his body, hugging them so they’d stop quivering. He calmed from his outburst, stuffing his fear inside himself and remaining quiet like his father had told him to be.

The deer flicked their ears and dipped their heads to nose around the undergrowth.

Martin rotated the boy around to face him, his voice still hushed and gentle. “Talk to me. What are you afraid of, son?”

“Nothing,” Malcolm lied.

“Are you scared of the noise?”

“No.”

“Are you afraid you’ll miss?” Martin guessed, then assured, “I promise you won't miss.”

Malcolm shook his head, emotion clogging up his windpipe and distorting his expression. He wanted to lift his hands and rub his eyes --cover his face-- before the dam burst.

His father’s next question was different from the rest. It lacked kindness. “Is it because it's _cute_ and _fuzzy?”_

Malcolm didn’t want to be called out for acting like a sissy, much less mocked for it. “What if it has a baby?” he whined, grasping for straws to use as excuses.

With a feigned innocence, his father inquired, “I didn't see a fawn down there. Did you?”

“I think so,” Malcolm attempted.

“They don’t have fawns this time of year, Malcolm.”

Malcolm had nothing left to use as an excuse. No escape route. No salvation. “Why do we have to kill it?” he whined again, demanding, _“Why?”_

“Well…. For food.”

“We already _have_ food.”

“For fun.”

“It's not fun,” Malcolm attested. “Not to me.”

His father blinked slowly, tapping into his reserves of patience. “Malcolm.”

The boy didn’t want to be subjected to his father’s incoming persuasion, manipulation, or coercion. He hurried to express, “I don’t wanna do it, Dad, I just wanna go home.”

“We’re not going home,” Martin calmly told him. “Not until you do this.”

Malcolm fought back with some verbal manipulation of his own. “You told Mom we were just camping. You promised her!”

“Well…” Martin drawled. He didn’t finish what he was going to say, but Malcolm knew what he was going to say. He was going to say, _‘I lied.’_

Malcolm jumped to ask another question. “Are we gonna hunt next time we go camping, too? With your friend?”

 _“Probably,”_ Martin nodded, then shook his head. “You don’t want to act like this around _him,_ do you?”

Malcolm tried to ignore the shame and embarrassment his father was trying to plant within him. “I don’t wanna hunt. You guys can go hunt, but I’m not gonna hunt,” he declared.

“Malcolm, look at me.” Martin dipped his head and held the boy’s shoulders. “There is nothing to be afraid of.”

“I’m not afraid, Dad! I just don't wanna hunt!” Malcolm cried.

Branches rustled below them.

They both looked back to the brook to see the small group of deer fleeing the riverbank. The creatures bounded and leaped through the undergrowth as they followed the water up the ravine.

Martin dropped his hands from Malcolm’s shoulders and let out a long sigh. “Alright.” The man stood up with the rifle, giving the boy a _look_ and vowing, “But one day, you will.”

He turned and lifted the Winchester to his shoulder, taking aim upstream.

Malcolm flinched as the gun fired.

* * *

The deafening sound ricocheted through the ravine.

It wasn’t a short, sharp, firecracker _pop!_ like that which a mere handgun made. This sound was deep, hollow, and canon-like. It was as if somebody had used all their strength to smack a heavy frying pan against a large sheet of metal --and done so in a red rock canyon in the heart of the Wild West. It was a sound that carried for miles. It was a sound that echoed of historical warfare. It was the sound of destruction. It was the sound of power.

It was one of Martin’s favorite sounds.

The subsequent ringing of his unprotected ears brought a serene silence to him, which balanced his mind and counter-acted the adrenaline coursing through his veins. The force of the gunshot made the rifle kick back slightly, straight into his shoulder, but his body easily absorbed the minor blow. An empty shell casing bounced out of the top of the gun, falling to the ground. After a swift push-pull of the lever, he raised the loaded weapon again, his cheek settling against the wood stock and his finger already over the trigger to take a second shot. He knew time was of the essence, and he was determined to not let her get away.

His magnified vision whirled through the forest, then stilled and lightly searched the last spot he’d seen her. The scope yielded the sight of his target; a doe, stiff-legged and dead in the brush, only yards from where he’d shot it. He immediately knew he’d punctured both lungs, and burst her heart. It was quite a fine shot, for aiming at a moving target. But it was nothing he hadn’t done before.

Martin lowered the rifle and glanced over to his son, who was still crouching by the tree and covering his ears. They were undoubtedly ringing too. Martin motioned for him to stay there. The boy wouldn't be able to hear him if he spoke, not for another few minutes.

It was a short hike down to the river, where it was apparent that his quarry was a young doe, probably only a few years old, perhaps not even having bred her first pair of fawns yet.

“Look at you,” Martin purred satisfactorily, smiling at the punctured sight of her.

He pulled out a pair of gloves from his jacket pocket, followed by a long, slender knife.

“What a beauty you are.”

Kneeling behind the carcass, he turned the animal on its back to expose a soft white underbelly, just begging to be split open. With a sound reminiscent of the tearing of fabric, he cut through her furred skin and guided the knife from her pelvic bone to her breastbone. He removed her entrails with ease, shoveling them out in one clumped mass after the windpipe and colon were severed. Sprawling her out like an opened and overturned book, he watched the last of her blood drain, forming hot red rivulets over the stones, leaves, and dirt below.

Then, with some zip ties from his jacket pocket, he bound her ankles, bound her wrists, and hefted the gutted creature onto his shoulders to carry her back up to the campsite.

* * *

The doe unceremoniously hung from a tree in a post-mortem lynching. The nylon rope fastened around its throat subtly creaked like twine from the gallows. The creature rotated idly between being jostled by the torment of its butcher. Her skin was peeled off her body, creating a sound like a long strip of duct tape being pulled from a roll. Steam rose from the exposed pink and white muscle as residual body heat escaped into the chilled morning air.

Martin had donned a leather apron, though his clothes were already stained with blood. With an array of tools hanging from his belt, all thoughtfully organized and appropriately sharpened, he went to work.

Little Malcolm sat on a log by the newly-rekindled campfire, his arms hugging his knees. The boy watched the flames licking at the wood in the firepit while his father went about his field dressing business in the background. To Malcolm’s dismay, the fire no longer gave him any warmth or comfort. Not like it used to.

With a cheerful tone, Martin called, “Do you wanna help?”

The child didn’t look up from the fire, only mumbling, “I’m not feeling very good,” in a meek response.

“What’s wrong? Are you sick?”

“Just a headache,” the boy answered miserably. “And…. I can’t stop shaking.”

“You’re probably just dehydrated,” Martin assured from across the small clearing. “Drink some water, and you’ll be fine.”

Malcolm didn’t drink any water.

After a few moments of silence --populated only by the distant, high pitched drone of insects in the woods and the occasional _crack_ and _pop_ of a limb being removed off from the deer-- Martin glanced back at his son.

The child remained staring into the weakly-burning campfire.

Martin focused on his work again, stripping a long tenderloin from the carcass’s back with a sickle-shaped blade. 

“This doesn’t bother you... I hope.” 

His voice was no longer as chipper as it was before.

“I’m okay.” Malcolm answered dully.

After a while, Martin extended another friendly invitation, excitement coloring his voice once again. “Wanna look at the heart?”

He tucked the sickle-shaped blade into his toolbelt and held up the organ he’d harvested. It had a dark ruby hue, and it glistened like a gemstone in his gloved palm. “You can see where the bullet went through,” he enticed, rotating it to show the boy the tattered, mangled hole from afar. The man was very proud of his achievement.

“No thanks.”

Martin’s fanatic grin fizzled. He placed the organ back in its Ziploc bag and dropped the bag lightly on the tree stump beside the hanging doe. “You usually _love_ learning about the body,” he called, as if Malcolm had suddenly decided he didn’t want to go on his favorite carnival ride. “Granted, it’s not exactly same as a human’s, but--”

“I’m just not feeling good,” Malcolm mumbled, a little louder this time.

It was clear he didn’t want to have a discussion about it.

Martin tipped his head and fetched another blade from his tool belt. “Alright.”

With another loud _crack,_ like that of a snapping twig, the animal’s final limb was broken off from it’s dangling torso.

Martin continued quartering the game on a rock which he used as a table surface. He neatly wrapped each butchered slab of meat with paper and plastic, like gifts to be placed under a christmas tree. All they were missing were ribbons and bows. He stacked the packages in a pile to one side, to be fitted into a backpack later.

The child still didn’t speak, instead continuing to stare into the fire as its strength fluctuated. However, he did steal a glance over at the strangled creature; now only a head with an unclean skeleton hanging from it.

Malcolm focused back on the fire.

There were less than a dozen yards between the father and son, yet for the first time, they felt on opposite ends of the world from each other. It was as if a great rift had split the earth between them, born from a violent and sudden _crack,_ like the sounds which had echoed from the deer’s dismembered carcass.

The looming silence was soon shattered as Martin began chatting again. “You know, people have hunted for thousands of years, son. All the way back to the _Paleolithic_ Era.”

The man started wrapping another slab of meat, operating on auto-pilot as he repeated a process he’d performed a thousand times. He looked up frequently as he explained to the boy, “There’s nothing wrong with it. Nothing to be _afraid_ of.”

Malcolm still didn’t speak.

“And you know, it’s even a _good_ thing, nowadays. It prevents overpopulation. You know all about food chains, and how an imbalance in the food chain can destroy entire ecosystems. There’s whole government _organizations_ about wildlife conservation and… _preservation._ With a bunch of _rules_ about what you can hunt, and what you _can’t_ hunt. There’s plenty of regulations in place so people don’t kill _too many_ animals. Did you know that?”

Malcolm remained frozen in front of the fire, his eyes glazed over like the doe’s.

Like something had died within him.

Martin paused to think about what he could say next. “Perhaps you’d fare better with fowl,” he supposed, cleaning up his improvised workstation. “Ducks, and birds.”

“People usually use _hunting dogs_ to retrieve fowl,” he informed the despondent child, mentioning, “My friend John used to have a hunting dog.”

That would pique his interest.

Malcolm finally spoke. “He did?”

“Mhmm,” Martin hummed, removing his bloody gloves and then using a cloth to clean the gorey muck that was dried upon his forearms. “But they're not like normal dogs,” he warned. “They're special.”

The man’s movements slowed as he finished wiping his arms and wrists, gazing over at the boy crouched in front of the flame. “They are bred and raised to hunt --not to be a family dog. Some do both, of course. But... a _real_ hunting dog only has one thing on its mind. Its job. Hunting.”

Malcolm still stared at the fire, but Martin could tell his son was listening to him.

As he should.

“The kind of dog John had was a retriever,” Martin continued, tossing the rag onto the rock. “So, John would shoot a bird, and wherever it would fall, the dog would go fetch it and bring it back.” Cheerfully, he added, “Or --if it was still alive, and hiding in the trees somewhere, the dog would lead us right to it!”

The flames’ reflection danced in Malcolm’s pupils. The child asked, “What happened to John's dog?”

He had not overlooked the fact that his father said his friend _‘used to’_ have a dog.

Martin’s smile faltered, but only for an instant. “Well, he…” Glancing at the packaged meat, then the awaiting backpack on the ground, he searched for a way to eloquently answer. As he fetched the backpack and began filling it with the bundles of meat, he decided it was best --in this case-- to be straightforward with the boy.

“He shot it.”

Malcolm lifted his head and looked over at him. “Why?”

“It didn't listen,” Martin shrugged, as if it were a very simple and appropriate sequence of events. “So, he shot it.”

Malcolm was stunned all over again.

“It's useless if it doesn't do what it was born to do,” Martin reasoned, zipping up the backpack. Then he removed his tool belt, laid it on the rock, and began cleaning his blades with the cloth. “More of a… _nuisance,_ and… _detriment,_ than it's worth,” he mumbled, inspecting each blade.

Malcolm hesitated to call over, “Did he not love his dog?”

Martin found that question humorous, but tried not to laugh. “No, he didn’t.” He glanced over at the boy, smiling as he explained, “The dog was just a _tool,_ son. When a tool is broken, you either fix it, or you throw it away.”

He continued cleaning his knives.

Malcolm stared. Not at him, not at the doe, not at the knives, not at anything in particular. He just stared, until he finally spoke up again. “...Dad?”

“Mhmm?” Martin hummed. When every blade was tended to, he rolled up the tool belt.

“...Am I a dog?”

Martin looked up. “What?” When he pieced together what the child meant, his expression pinched in a gentle wince, as if the question was silly, but had also pained him. “No! No, heavens, no, my boy.” He chuckled and set the tool belt down again, abandoning it to give Malcolm his full attention. “Of course not. Why would you think something like that?”

The child adjusted his arms around his knees and glanced to the ground between them as if he could see the invisible chasm which separated them.

Martin removed his apron and draped it over a branch beside the macabre doe. Then, he closed the distance between him and the boy, crossing the invisible line that divided them. “You’re my _son,”_ he testified kindly, kneeling in front of the boy. “And I love you very, _very_ much.”

Malcolm hesitated to look him in the eye.

Martin gave him a soft smile, then playfully tilted his head and gently added, “Even when you don’t always do what you're told.”

Malcolm studied that smile. He looked his father up and down _\--carefully,_ taking in every detail of him in an effort to search for the truth. Some dried blood stained his clothes, tainting the white stripes of his plaid shirt… but his hands were perfectly, deceivingly, clean.

“Malcolm.”

The boy looked back up into his father’s endlessly deep eyes.

“I’m sorry about this morning,” the man apologized, finally addressing the elephant in the nonexistent room in a direct manner.

His voice was different now. No humor fringed the edges of his words. They were free to flow out of his mouth, unaltered by the mold of a smile.

“I pressured you into doing something you weren’t ready to do,” Martin murmured sadly. “Didn’t I?”

Malcolm hesitated, but gave a small, small nod.

“I’m very sorry,” Martin told him. He slowly shook his head. “I won’t do that again. Alright?”

“Okay,” the boy whispered. 

“Can you forgive me?” Martin asked. A wounded nature slowly returned to his tone. “Are we still friends?”

Malcolm nodded again, glad that his father wasn’t ignoring the gap between them, or acting like everything was fine when it wasn’t --a habit the boy had inherited, in fact. For a moment, Malcolm felt like there wasn’t a gap between them anymore. He felt like things were _good_ again. Safe. Peaceful. Happy.

He felt like his _father_ was good again.

Martin opened his arms. “Come here.”

The child departed from the log and accepted his father’s embrace, wrapping his arms around his neck. He sought the familiar, calming scent of the man’s natural musk, buried beneath the metallic smell of blood that clouded around his clothes. Past the aroma of iron, he could detect Christmas on his father's skin. Sweet sugar cookies, warm gingerbread, and pungent pine.

Martin folded his arms over the child’s small back, hugging him firmly and turning his head to press his own nose into the boy’s short strands of brown hair. “I love you,” he repeated. “You know that?”

Malcolm nodded into his shoulder.

At the time, he loved his father, too.


	9. The Cabin

Malcolm would do better this time. Martin was sure of it. This time, he’d prepared a brilliant, fool-proof plan to ease the boy into the family business. And then, one day…

The sun rose.

The densely-packed timbers which lined the dirt pathway opened up to reveal a grassy clearing. A lone cabin stood erect in the hidden grove of the woods. Morning dew sparkled on the blades of grass, reflecting the sun’s dreamy pink and orange light. Through the windows of the station wagon, Martin could hear the merry chirping of birds in the distant branches, along with the chittering of squirrels, who chased each other through the canopy of pine.

He pulled the wagon off the dirt road into a flat patch of grass to park. After pulling the hand brake and turning the key, the man glanced in the rear-view mirror, expecting John’s truck to bumble up the pathway behind them at any moment.

It was then that he noticed a blanketed shape shift in the back of the car.

Martin continued watching through the mirror, but the blanket in the trunk did not shift again. Carefully, he unbuckled his seatbelt without taking his eyes off the mirror. Despite his attempt to maintain the silence in the air, the metallic  _ click _ echoed throughout the car, sounding much louder than it actually was.

Still, the blanket did not shift.

Martin waited for a moment longer, his eyes fixed on the rear-view mirror. Patience had always been his best-kept virtue.

The blanket was motionless.

Perhaps it had been a trick of the light. A shadow from a rustling tree that had passed over the contents of the trunk, or a dark spot in his peripheral vision.

Perhaps. But he wasn’t taking any chances.

Martin reached for the handle to the driver’s side door, moving quietly so as not to wake his son sleeping in the passenger seat beside him.

But then, Malcolm shifted.

The child rolled his head as a small groan escaped his chest, humming through his nose. His elbows lifted and his arms extended as he stretched.

Martin released the handle to the driver’s side door with another glance in the rear view mirror. “Good morning,” he smiled at his son, excitement masking his voice. “Guess where we are.”

“The cabin?”

“Yup. Look.” Martin motioned out the boy’s window.

Malcolm followed his gesture, sitting up in his seat to take in the sight of their weekend getaway. With a grin on his face, the boy unbuckled his seatbelt and got out of the car. Tossing one last glance over his shoulder to the backseat, Martin got out of the car too. After the doors were shut, he pressed the ‘lock’ button on the car fob.

He pressed it five times, for good measure.

Malcolm followed a pathway of tiny river pebbles leading up to the front porch of the cabin, eager to get a better look at the log structure. He found the trinkets hanging from the porch awning; an old stained glass ornament of Christ, and a clump of wind chimes made from hollow bone.

“Woah! Look at that!” the boy gasped. Then the questions came. “What kind of bones are those, dad?”

Martin stood back by the wagon, watching the child explore. “Guess.”

Malcolm reached up to lightly touch them, performing a gentle inspection. “Bird bones?”

Martin wandered around the length of the station wagon, eyeing their luggage in the backseat. “Yep,” he called back distractedly.

Inside, the blanket rose and fell as if it was breathing.

“Did John make that?” Malcolm called.

“No, I did.” Martin answered, glancing up to ensure Malcolm was still enamored with the silly trinkets. Then, the man opened the trunk, reaching in to grab a case and open it.

“Wow, Dad! That’s awesome! I wanna make one!”

The case was filled with vials and needles.

Martin glanced up again.

Malcolm was still frolicking around the porch, oblivious.

“Wull, maybe you will,” he called, doing his best to keep his voice cheery despite being distracted by filling a syringe.

Another distraction bumbled out of the forest, rolling up the dirt pathway through the trees. Martin turned to the green truck as it pulled onto the grass to park.  _ About time. _ There was work to do, and he couldn’t do it alone. Not when he had to watch Malcolm.

John got out of the car, hocked a loogie into the bushes, rubbed a hand over his beard, and then noticed his literal partner in crime digging around in the back of the station wagon. Martin met his gaze and tipped his head to the child on the porch. John obeyed.

“Hey kid,” the man called, stepping up the pebbled pathway to the porch. “You looking at the wind chimes?”

“Dad made ‘em!” Malcolm boasted proudly.

“Sure did,” John confirmed with a chuckle. The skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled as he grinned at the child. “You wanna see something else cool?” he asked, stepping up onto the deck to unlock the front door.

“Yeah!” Malcolm jumped eagerly beside him.

From the back of the station wagon, Martin watched the boy follow John inside the cabin. When the cabin door shut, The Surgeon lifted the edge of the blanket, a syringe ready in his other hand.

* * *

"That's not what happened," Malcolm snapped. He was repulsed by the notion that he was  _ frolicking  _ around the cabin when they’d arrived.

"Isn’t it?” Dr. Whitly asked innocently. He was once again sitting in his desk chair, rotating back and forth in a calm manner to entertain himself.

“No,” the profiler seethed. He stormed closer, the tips of his shoes touching the edge of the red line on the ground between them. “That’s not what happened at all, and you know it,” he accused with a pointed finger.

Dr. Whitly resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He sighed as he re-enlisted his patience. “Then tell me what happened, son."

Malcolm did.

* * *

Malcolm snapped awake, his heart pounding in his chest. He was too stunned from his nightmarish visions to flinch, or cry out, so he simply opened his eyes without a word. His muscles were frozen with a paralyzing terror that consumed his veins. The residual fear slowly ebbed away, along with any recollection of what his nightmare had been about. The boy finally blinked and began to relax as he came to recognize that he was sitting in the passenger seat of the station wagon.

“Good morning!” his father chirped beside him.

Malcolm moved his stiff arms to lift his hands and rub his eyes. Then he glanced out the windows. It wasn’t quite morning yet. The sky was turning blue, but the sun had not yet broken the mountainous horizon to banish the darkness. The station wagon rolled across a pathway of gravel, sharp and rocky beneath their tires. They passed through a thin corridor of trees, which opened up to reveal a clearing. In the center of it, an ominous log cabin stood erect, shrouded in shadow and navy hues.

“You woke up just in time,” his father announced. “We’re here.”

The cabin was crooked, and poorly taken care of. The shingles were peeling from the roof like old skin from an unsuccessful reptile shed --so black they almost appeared burnt. A fungus that was either plant matter or mold grew in the crevices of the cabin’s facade. One shutter hung from a second floor window by a single rusty nail on a single rusty hinge. 

The station wagon parked on a patch of grass just off the gravel pathway. His father exited the car without a second’s hesitation, but Malcolm didn't  _ want  _ to get out of the car. The cabin looked frightening, uninviting, and abandoned. More than that, something about it felt... wrong. Something inside of him told him ‘ _ don’t go in there.’ _ Something inside him told him that there was something dark in that cabin. Something dangerous, and unseen. Some kind of monster, lurking.

Malcolm swallowed and tried to blink away the dismal filter through which he saw that cabin. His thoughts were residual thoughts from his nightmare, nothing more, he told himself. It was just too bad he couldn’t remember what his nightmare had been about in the first place.

His father stood in front of the house, taking a large breath of the fresh mountain air and surveying the land. He turned back to the car with a smile and motioned for Malcolm to come outside and join him.

Malcolm didn’t want to.

Malcolm wanted to go  _ home. _ But there was no going home. There was no turning back. He briefly fantasized about crawling over into the driver’s seat and starting the car. He daydreamed about driving far, far away from that place. He wished he could do such a thing. But that was silly. He couldn’t fit in the seat. He couldn’t reach the pedals and see over the dashboard. He didn’t know how to operate the vehicle. He was helpless, and stuck there.

He was also overreacting.

With some mental acceptance that this trip wasn’t going to be all that fun, but there was nothing he could do about it except try to make the best of it and wait until it was over, he took in a deep breath and opened the passenger door. The boy departed from the station wagon, leaving it empty.

Yet, in that empty car, a blanket rustled.

A subtle coldness radiated from the ground under Malcolm’s feet. The grass was slick with morning dew, as if the torn sky had wept while he slept. He stuffed his hands in his oversized jacket pockets and trudged over to meet his father.

“What do you think, son?’

“It’s... old,” Malcolm muttered, surveying the cabin once again. He could hear wind faintly howling through it now, and he feared it had no electricity --no warmth-- inside.

“Yes, it is very old,” Martin chuckled. But he continued to smile, oblivious to the dreary sight in front of them. “I think John said his grandparents built this cabin. Isn’t that neat?”

Malcolm nodded dejectedly, believing the cabin was anything but ‘neat.’

An engine rumbled behind them, and Malcolm turned to see a pair of headlights emerge through the trees. They were not ‘brights.’ They glowed with a dim dishonesty in their light. They were sinister, unblinking, starving, dead, soulless lights. They were the same headlights that had been following the Whitlys the night before. Now, those headlights finally caught up to them.

In the blue hue of the morning, Malcolm could see they belonged to a monstrous green truck that so enthusiastically crushed the gravel beneath its wheels, it was as if the vehicle enjoyed it. The truck bumbled up the path and did not slow as it entered the clearing. Fearing that he’d get run over if he stood off on his own, Malcolm gravitated towards his father --believing the man was an invincible statue that would surely stop the truck as effectively as a stone pillar if it tried to hit them.

Martin didn’t seem to notice that the truck was barreling right towards them. He didn’t so much as turn around, only glancing down at his son with a small smile as if the boy’s nervousness was funny.

The tires of the truck turned at the last second and the large vehicle halted beside their station wagon, which suddenly looked comically small beside it. John stumbled out with a slam of the door and ran a hand through his stringy hair. In almost the same motion, he lit another cigarette upon his lips and then circled around to the back of the truck to open it and start unloading it.

“Why don’t you help John unpack?” Martin suggested warmly. He placed a hand on Malcolm’s shoulder to usher him toward the truck, and Malcolm obeyed in a daze. “Give him some bags to carry, John.”

John hefted out a couple of bags from his truck and held them out to the kid, releasing them carelessly into the child’s hands. Malcolm nearly toppled over when he caught them, and he struggled to maneuver the straps over his shoulders so his wrists weren’t strained under their weight.

“You got those?”

“Yeah,” the boy croaked, loading the heavy sacks onto his back.

John grabbed a few more bags and slammed the hatch closed. “You sure? Not gonna wimp out on me, are ya?” he snickered, starting to the porch.

Malcolm shuffled after him like he was being weighed down by chains. Maybe that was what he was carrying in those bags; chains. That, or a bunch of gold coins. He could have sworn the contents of the bags quietly chinked as he hauled them forward. He suddenly empathized with Jacob Marley from  _ The Christmas Carol. _

“No, sir,” he answered.

John ascended the few steps to the porch and fished in his pockets for the key to the door. Malcolm looked around at the old wooden deck and judgmentally eyed the decrepit hand railing. Overhead, the hollow bones of makeshift wind chimes clinked and clattered together as a gentle breeze caressed through them. A medallion of a religious figure hung beside it as a companion trinket. Malcolm squinted up at the stained glass, but it was too distorted with age and too blackened with rust for him to discern what it was originally. Perhaps an image of Jesus? Now, it only appeared as some sort of demon.

The front door  _ clicked _ and  _ creaked _ as it was opened. Malcolm watched John disappear into the void ahead of him. The man didn’t turn on any lights, instead making his way through the darkness, knowing the way without requiring a light to guide him.

The boy did not follow John inside.

He had that bad feeling again. He heard that inner voice which told him, ‘ _ Don't go in there.’  _ He stood in front of the open door, weighed down by more than the heavy bags which were slung over his ten-year-old back.

“Malcolm.”

The child turned around when he heard his father’s semi-distant voice. 

Martin was at the back of the station wagon, the trunk door open sideways so he could rummage through it. But, for now, his attention was fully on his son. He called over, “What’s wrong?”

Malcolm hesitated, thinking of what he could say that wouldn’t sound infantile. “It’s too dark.” He spoke quietly, not wanting John to hear him ‘wimp out.’

His father grinned, humored. “Then turn on a light, son.”

Malcolm wished the solution could be that simple.

“Go on,” his father called, busying himself with the contents of the station wagon once more. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Reluctantly, Malcolm obeyed and stepped inside the cabin.


	10. The Dog

The light switch didn’t work.

Malcolm flipped it a few times, but the cabin remained dark.

“That’s not gonna do anything until I put fuel in the generator, kid.”

Feeling stupid, Malcolm stopped playing with the light switch.

John moved past him in the darkness. “You can put those bags by that door.”

Malcolm shuffled his way over to where he could barely make out a door in the darkness, then relieved his back of the load he carried. The bags _chinked_ heavily as they dropped on the floor. Furrowing his brow, Malcolm turned to find John in the darkness. He spotted him by identifying the embers glowing within his cigarette. “What’s in them?”

“Whaddya think’s in them?” John asked, exhaling smoke into the living room as he threw two of his own bags beside Malcolm's. Those bags _chinked_ when they hit the floor, too.

The sound echoed in Malcolm's ears. “Chains?”

“Yeah there’s some chain in there,” John kneeled down and roughly opened one bag, removing one of the heavy metal objects from the bag. It looked like a horseshoe--two of them hinged together-- with teeth.

“They’re traps.”

Malcolm had never seen one before. It was old and rusted. It looked like it belonged in an antique shop, or a museum. He studied it as John held it up in the darkness. “What are they for?”

“Trappin’,” John answered, mocking the question. But he knew the kid was asking what, specifically, they were meant to trap. While turning over the object in his hands and showing the boy the iron teeth, he drawled, “Rabbits, squirrels, deer... whatever’s dumb enough to step in ‘em.”

Malcolm flinched as the object snapped shut in front of his face. The action was so quick and powerful, it was very obvious it could chomp right through a femur as if it was a toothpick.

John chuckled like an entertained playground bully and tossed the trap back in the bag. “Come on, I’ll show you upstairs,” he invited nonchalantly, ascending up an L-shaped staircase that creaked beneath every step of his large boots.

Malcolm reluctantly followed him to the second floor, where there was slightly more light in the house --only because there were no drapes over the window in the upstairs hall, and all the shutters except for one had fallen off the exterior. There were five closed doors in the hall. John opened the nearest one, on the left, sighing, “There’s your dad’s room.”

He did the same with the next door on the left. “Your room.”

And at the end of the hall, with the last door on the right. “And my room.”

Concluding the short tour, he gestured lazily at the last two doors which were on the right side. “Closet, bathroom. ”

Malcolm briefly peered into each of the bedrooms as John opened them, careful not to get in the man’s way as he made his rounds.

John’s ‘room’ was not a bedroom. It was an office, with a small cot set up in front of an unused desk. A dusty grandfather clock ticked in the corner, and it was a complete mystery how it still functioned considering the condition it was in. But Malcolm didn’t look at it for long. There was something far more attention grabbing --and alarming-- mounted high up on the walls. Animals. Lots of animals, all dead and taxidermied from the neck up.

The unexpected sight stunned Malcolm for a second, and he went to go check in his room again to ensure there were none on his walls. There were, but not nearly as much. Only a single deer’s head gazed down at him from its place on the wall. There was only one spike on each antler. A young buck, taken before its prime.

Malcolm’s room had a bunk bed, but some boxes and trunks were stored on the top bunk. It’s window was in the center of the room, missing both shutters on the outside, and without any drapes on the inside, allowing in a healthy flood of light from the sunrise. There were some landscape paintings on the walls, and a few old toy trucks scattered around the floor, untouched for years. That room wasn’t so bad, Malcolm thought with some relief. He’d just have to do his best not to look up at that deer when he slept at night.

The room closest to the stairs, Martin’s room, was the one that appeared like a true bedroom. It had a large King-sized bed and an oak vanity and the biggest windows, which bore translucent floral-embroidered drapes. A full bathroom was around the corner, and there wasn’t the same scent of age and dust in this room compared to the others. It was apparent that someone made an effort to keep this space clean. The room almost reminded Malcolm of home, and that was somewhat comforting.

Malcolm was perplexed by the room assignments. They seemed wrong. This was _John’s_ cabin. Malcolm and his dad were only guests. Why did John sleep in the office?

“Why isn’t this one your room?” the boy asked, gesturing inside the master bedroom.

“I don’t go in that room,” John muttered, lingering at the end of the hall near the doorway to the office. He rested one hand on the strap of the duffel bag over his shoulder, his other hand thumbing a lighter to relight his cigarette. It was almost as if he was… _scared_ of the master bedroom, Malcolm noticed. 

The boy cast one last glance into his father’s assigned room, trying to spot what John didn’t like about it. The cool white curtains filtered the morning sun’s light, turning it into a cream, moon-like wash. It looked serene, cold, and peaceful. But there was a large cabinet in the far corner --an old wardrobe-- cast in shadow due to its own sharp edge blocking the light. Maybe John was afraid of that. It looked like the perfect spot for a monster to hide.

Malcolm wasn’t afraid of the wardrobe. It was in his father’s room, and his father would never allow a monster to lurk where he slept.

Besides, monsters were only the stuff of stories.

“Then why not this one?” Malcolm asked, stepping over to his room. It was smaller than the first room, but it was better than an office.

“I had that one when I was a kid,” John mumbled, slipping into the office while taking another deep drag of his cigarette.

Malcolm glanced back into the bedroom with a renewed curiosity, imaging what John would have been like as a kid. Those toy trucks were probably his. He might have even shot that deer on the wall when he was a teenager. Malcolm wondered if John’s dad had made him do it, or if he’d wanted to do it.

But Malcolm tried not to think about that.

“Do you have a gun?” the boy asked, moving on to the office, where he watched John drop off his duffel bag and begin unpacking the clothes from it. He didn’t have a closet, instead placing the shirts and khakis over the back of the desk chair, or on top of another pile of stuff.

“‘Course I do. Got several of ‘em.”

Malcolm saw them in the corner, leaning against the wall and a pipe. One was pointing up, one was pointing down, one was on the floor, dismantled into two pieces with a skinny bristle brush and a box of oils beside it. It must have been a cleaning kit, but it looked anything but clean. There was grime and oil everywhere. Malcolm didn’t know if the guns were empty, and he didn’t know how to check for that with those kinds of guns, so he didn’t touch them. But he recognized one of them from the movies.

“Is that a shotgun?” he asked, pointing at the double barreled weapon.

“Yup,” John answered, his attention on unpacking. He gave up, dumping out the rest of the clothes from the bag onto the cot. Some mismatched socks tumbled to the floor.

“Do you hunt with it?”

“Birds, sometimes, but not really,” John wandered over to the corner and snatched up the shotgun. He flipped a latch and the two barrels folded down on a hinge. “This one’s mostly a self defense gun.”

Malcolm craned his head over to see that the hanging barrels were empty, then gave John some space as he thumbed two shells into them and lifted the barrels back up into place with a swift _click._

The boy took a frightened step back as John suddenly lifted the weapon to his shoulder and aimed it straight at the child, causing a spike of fear to jolt down Malcolm's back, freezing him in place while his heart jumpstarted into overdrive.

“In case your dad gets any crazy ideas,” John grinned.

He let Malcolm stand in terror for a moment before lowering the shotgun and snickering at the pale color of the child’s puppy face.

Malcolm was slow to relax. He didn't think that was a very funny joke.

John placed the shotgun back in the corner, loaded with the muzzle pointed up. He switched to pick up the gun that was beside it. “I hunt with this one.” It was a rifle, somewhat similar to Martin’s, except John’s looked older. It was heavily scratched and worn and the metal was tarnished beyond repair.

Malcolm inched toward the door, ready to run if John irresponsibly played around with his gun again.

John didn’t pull any more dangerous jokes, only inspecting the firearm and then gesturing over to an elk on the wall. “I shot that twelve-pointer with this. Just last year.”

Malcolm glanced at the elk, which neighbored a bobcat pelt, a ram’s head, and a dried bear skull. “Did you shoot all of these animals?” he asked warily, saddened by the graveyard surrounding them.

“No. Your dad shot most of ‘em. If he got rid of his _shit,_ I could put more of _mine_ up there,” John complained. He next motioned to a goose with its wings spread wide open. “Look how big this one is.”

Malcolm stared up at it until he forced his eyes down, unable to look into its glossy eyes any longer.

“What’s the matter, you scared of birds?”

Malcolm massaged his hands, feeling them start to shake. “Why do you and dad like to hunt?” he asked, honestly trying to understand the reason behind the hobby.

“Your dad thinks it’s art. He likes posing ‘em like this,” John muttered, reaching up to touch the bird’s long feathers. “Like they’re dolls or somethin’.”

“For me, it’s just somethin’ to do,” John said. “And they’re nice to look at.” His fingers carelessly passed over each stiff feather, separating some of the barbed quills. “And touch.”

“Why don’t you just do those things when they’re alive?”

“‘Cause it’s _better_ to do it when they’re dead,” John growled, as if it was obvious. “They don't fight _back_ when they’re dead. They don’t run _away_ from ya, when they’re dead.”

He was so defensive about the question, Malcolm almost wondered if he was talking about something else. Something other than animals.

After a moment, John lowered his hand, then busied himself with his cigarette again. “It’s better when they’re dead,” he repeated, lost in thought.

Malcolm didn’t agree, but he kept his mouth shut. He’d already asked too many questions, and he didn’t want to upset the man.

John dropped his rifle on the cot and stalked around the room rearranging things, yet the room made no progress toward cleanliness. “You went hunting with your dad a couple weeks ago didn’tcha?”

Malcolm nodded.

“Didja have fun?”

Malcolm shrugged.

“You shoot anythin’?”

Malcolm shook his head.

“Just sat around, huh?”

“Dad shot a doe,” Malcolm mumbled. 

“A doe, huh? Not a buck?”

Malcolm shook his head again. “Mom doesn’t want any antlers in the house.”

John chuckled. “Well, it’s your dad’s house too, isn’t it?"

Malcolm didn’t have an answer for him. He had a feeling that the stranger was degrading his mother’s rules, or making fun of them. It felt wrong to agree with John’s inquiry, but in that moment Malcolm didn’t feel confident enough to defend his mom.

“Does your dad _always_ listen to what your _momma_ says?”

“Not always," Malcolm mumbled.

John snickered like that was a _sissy_ thing for Martin to do; listen to his wife. Malcolm felt a flash of defensiveness for his family. Perhaps John was simply jealous, he thought, in a slightly combative way. 

“Do you have a wife?” the child asked. His voice was even, lacking any accusation.

John’s snicker faded, but he grumbled back without much thought to an answer. “No.”

“How come?” Malcolm asked, again phlegmatically.

“Don’t need one,” John sneered, annoyed.

“Don’t you get lonely?”

“No. I don’t.”

Malcolm knew he was toeing a thin line. He backed off the conversation, and didn’t ask any more about John’s lack of a companion. It was no mystery to him _why_ John was single. He wasn’t a ‘gentleman’ at all.

Speaking of companions....

“Dad said you used to have a dog.”

“Wasn’t my dog,” John tossed some faded jeans onto the desk. A puff of dust curled up from the wood surface. “It was his.”

Malcolm furrowed his brow. Either John was lying to him, or his father had lied to him.

“He said you shot it,” Malcolm said. “Is that true?” He tried to keep the judgment out of his voice, which was difficult for him to do because he thought it was a very evil thing to shoot a dog.

John stopped unpacking to glance back at the boy. “He said _I_ shot it?”

Malcolm nodded.

After a second, John smirked. Then he walked over, leaned down, and took a breath like he was preparing to ask the child a very tricky and very important question --one that he doubted Malcolm would get right. “What if I told you… your _dad_ was the one who shot it?”

Malcolm scrunched his face, but he held the man’s gaze. He thought hard about that question, and worked just as hard to ignore the emotions that it elicited within him. Instead of giving in to his feelings, his doubts, and his _fears_ \--he replied with logic. He simply answered John’s question. “Then I would ask Dad if that was true.”

John grinned like something was funny to him. “Then ‘round and ‘round we’d go,” he drawled playfully, as if referencing a carnival ride built of lies.

Malcolm heard a noise downstairs, making him jump. The boy realized it must have been his dad. He ran out of the room and down the stairs, not wanting to spend one more second in that office full of dead animals and uncomfortable conversations --which he didn’t know whether to believe or to regard as a joke.

John smiled as he watched the kid run away.

Like the coward he was.

* * *

Malcolm called, “Hey, Dad?” as he tromped down the creaky steps and rounded the right angle of the staircase. He halted in his tracks when he saw his father in the kitchen.

Martin set a few cases onto the old laminated countertop, ensuring the latches were closed. “Hey, son,” he greeted with a smile. “Did John show you around upstairs?”

Malcolm hesitated on the stairwell. “Yeah--” He was about to ask a question --maybe about the dog, or maybe about why John slept in the office, or maybe if he could steal his father away have a private talk with him about the whole shotgun incident.

Whatever it was, Martin cut off his question before he could even ask it. “Did John show you around the rest of the house?” He opened some curtains with a sliding of metal rings, permitting light to enter the space.

John hadn't shown Malcolm the rest of the house, but the boy could see it all, thanks to the open floor plan. The kitchen was to the left, and just beyond it; a dining table and a back door. The _front_ door was to the right, as well as a small living room with a tattered old green couch and a boxy TV with bug-like antennae sticking out of the top. A fireplace dominated the opposite wall between the kitchen and living room, empty and cold.

The basement door was beside the staircase.

Malcolm glanced up to the second floor to check that John had not followed after him, which he hadn't --at least, not yet. The boy hurried over to his dad. “Yeah, and--”

“Did he show you the bear skull?” Martin asked eagerly, placing a container of expensive steak knives into a kitchen drawer.

“Uh-- no--”

“Oh, you’ve got to see the bear skull,” Martin recommended excitedly. Then, he called out, “John, bring down the bear skull!”

The child grimaced. He didn’t want John to come downstairs. He tried to speak again. “Dad--!”

His word was overpowered by a wooden creak.

As John stepped down the staircase, he called back, “And give him nightmares? He was scared of the fuckin’ _goose,_ he doesn’t need to see a bear skull!”

Malcolm huffed in frustration and whirled around to yell at the brute, “I wasn’t scared!” The jerk was just making up crap to embarrass him in front of his dad and make him look like a wimp. 

“You didn’t like the goose?” Martin asked, worried and at risk of being disappointed.

“No!” Malcolm protested, then tried to correct, “I mean, I-- I don’t--”

John reached the first floor with a lazy saunter. He chanted immaturely as he weaseled his way over and tried to poke at the boy. “Mal-colm’s a scared-y cat, Mal-colm’s a scared-y cat!”

“No, I’m not!” Malcolm fled to the other side of his father to seek shelter from the man’s teasing. 

Martin did not appreciate being danced around like a maypole. He cast a dull, annoyed glare at the one who should have been acting like an adult.

As if realizing how close he’d come to disturbing a hive of sleeping bees, John backed off with a surrendering lift of his hands. However, he snickered, a cruel grin on his face. “Just fuckin’ around, Whitly.”

“Well, quit it. You sound like a moron,” Martin muttered, turning back to unpack the kitchenware.

John made a face and wandered out of the kitchen to toss his spent cigarette into the dormant fireplace, where it joined more litter buried in ash.

Malcolm hovered near his father, asking quietly, “Dad?”

“What is it, son?” Martin asked distractedly, looking around to ensure he hadn’t missed anything that needed to be put away.

The boy struggled to figure out what to say while John was in the room. “Um, I-- I--”

“Where did you put those bags you had?” Martin murmured, casting his gaze around the house. “Oh, I see them, they’re right there. Thank you for carrying those," he praised sweetly. “You’re such a good helper.”

Malcolm jumped on an opportunity to get some privacy with his dad. “Can I help you carry in more stuff?” he asked eagerly.

Now, Martin hesitated. “Um....” He didn’t necessarily _change_ the subject. He merely _twisted_ it. “John, do you still have stuff in your car?”

“Yeah. You?”

“Just the, uh… _tent.”_ Martin answered carefully.

“I can carry the tent!” Malcolm volunteered. He started for the door, eager to get outside.

His father snatched his arm, his movement as quick as lightning --but his grip gentle. “That’s alright, Malcolm. John can take care of it.” Letting his arm go, he explained, “The tent’s very heavy. It’s not like the one we had last time. Instead, why don’t you…” Martin thought for a moment. “Oh, I know what you could do. There’s a creek just on the other side of that little ridge out back. Why don’t you go explore around there, hm? That’d be fun.”

Malcolm sighed. “But I want to help you.”

“I don’t need any more help, son. John and I will unpack the rest.”

John pitched in, “Go on, kid, go check out the creek.”

Malcolm gave him a subtly hateful glare, similar to his father’s.

John remained grinning by the fireplace, picking at his nails with his hunting knife. He knew exactly what the kid was trying to do. He was trying to get some alone time with his daddy to tattle on his mischief with the shotgun and ask about that stupid dog. But Martin wasn’t interested in chit-chat at the moment. He was interested in getting things in their proper place.

Feeling outnumbered and a little betrayed, Malcolm hesitated to leave. With a few last lingering looks aimed at his dad, Malcolm reluctantly wandered towards the back door, driven out by their reign.

When the child was gone, the two men looked at each other, communicating in a telepathic exchange. They split up like wolves, one heading out the front door while the other disappeared into to the dark basement.

Only one thing was one each of their minds.

Their job.

Hunting.


	11. The Creek

Leaves crunched underfoot as the banished boy made his way toward the small ridge behind the cabin. The ridge appeared as if a giant snake had burrowed under the surface of the ground and then decided to stay there and become one with the earth. It wasn’t tall enough to be a very good sledding hill in the winter, but it was just inclined enough that Malcolm had to push his hands on his thighs as he climbed it --only for about ten large steps. At the crest of it, he turned to look at the cabin behind him. It was just as ugly in the back as it was in the front. Maybe even uglier.

The cabin was silent, and still. It was a black, burnt heap of damaged timber. It was a wretched eyesore that did not belong in the midst of such a vast, beautiful forest.

After pressing his lips into a dismayed expression, he continued down the other side of the ridge, imagining that he was leaving the cabin for good, never to go back. Malcolm preferred it in the woods, and after a short while of accepting his solitude, he decided this was a good idea after all. It gave him time to sort his thoughts and to calm down from his irritated, nervous, befuddled emotions.

He decided to mark a few trees along the way so he didn’t get lost --not that he was wandering off very far. He could still see the top of the cabin’s roof through a patch of skeletal trees, which were tall and straight like the bars of a cell. He knew he was close enough to hear if anybody called for him to come back. Childishly, he decided he’d only go back if he heard his father call for him, but he wouldn’t go back for John.

He gazed at his pocket knife between marking the trees he passed, carving arrows into the wood which pointed behind himself. The aspens’ bark was white and chalky and easy to carve into, but the other trees’ bark was dark and rough. He didn’t know what those trees were called. Aspens were easy to identify because they were spotted and soft, like a Dalmation, with tiny circle leaves that looked like yellow tags on a dog’s collar.

The sun finally peeked over the mountains and started to warm the earth. He found the creek without difficulty, and was pleased to see that it was only a humble trickle of water, like someone was pouring out an endless-but-small bucket at the top of the mountains. It wasn’t too loud, and he knew he could still hear his father if he called for him. Malcolm sat on a rock by the creek, whittling a stick with his knife while his thoughts began to churn in his head like the water churning over the stones at his feet. The sunlight danced in the tiny rapids, casting a shimmering trick of the light up onto his face.

He noticed the dancing light, and held out his hand to watch it play over the fabric of his jacket and the cold skin of his palm. As the sun shifted in the sky and the angle of the light changed, the trick vanished.

Malcolm’s ears tingled --not just from the cold, but also because he heard a faint, distant sound. A car door slam shut? The cabin door slam shut? Whatever it had been, the echo of it distorted in his memory. Maybe it had been nothing at all.

He wished he had a better memory.

He focused on whittling his stick, but his foggy failure to recollect the recent past bothered him. While he carefully cut into the wood, he tried to make his way through that mental fog once again. He tried to remember some of his most recent nightmare, which he’d suffered during the drive up the mountain.

Had there been another… _box_ in that dream?

No. And why would he be scared of a box?

He kept trying to navigate through the haze.

Had there been….?

A black silhouette.

A long muzzle, daggers for teeth.

Not that kind of muzzle. The muzzle flash of a rifle.

Sparks falling, flame breathing.

Burning castles.

It wasn’t fog which clouded his memory.

It was smoke.

* * *

She didn’t know what was happening. Her mind was too foggy, too groggy, too disoriented, too _numb._ She was not fully awake and she was nowhere near all the way ‘there,’ but she knew she had to fight. Her instincts for survival still glowed underneath her spiritual suffocation.

She was moving without moving. She felt her boneless limbs sway with the guidance of gravity. She vaguely registered that she was being carried. Her head was lying against someone’s shoulder. Someone who smelled like shitty cologne and cigarettes.

Her jaw was limp like the rest of her, hanging helplessly open --yet her breath turned into a mask of condensation around her face. A hand was over her mouth for the purpose of keeping her quiet as much as it was to keep her from falling out of her carrier’s hold.

Unable to work any other muscle in her body, it took all of her willpower and all of her strength to close her jaw and bite down on one of the fingers of that hand. She couldn’t tell how much pressure she applied, but she prayed it was enough.

Simultaneously tasting blood and feeling her captor flinch, she was relieved to find that it was much more than enough.

_“OW!”_

She was dropped like she was a red-hot iron.

Concrete slammed into her ankles, knees, hip, shoulder, and head --all in rapid succession as she crumpled to the ground. She didn’t feel any of that, lacking nearly all sensation in her nerves, but she heard the impact, and she knew it had done some damage. The same went for what came after, when a boot stomped in her face. 

“Fuckin’ _bitch!”_

She heard the _crunch_ and felt the heat of wet blood trickle down the side of her face, out her nose, and between some teeth. She couldn’t move, though her body jostled limply from the abuse. Her vision spun as if she were on one of those terribly nauseating carnival rides, her brain lagging behind itself in a drugged and disjointed daze.

She didn’t need to have functioning vision to know that a second blow was coming. 

But it didn’t come.

There was a small scuffle of movement nearby her, and the would-be second blow was blocked by an abrupt halt of force.

 _“Christ,_ John,” a second voice exclaimed.

She blinked through the blood dripping in her eye, barely able to make out two figures.

“What have I told you about minimal damage? Do you understand what _minimal_ means? Get out.”

One figure pushed the other away.

“The cunt _bit_ me!”

 _“Good!_ Now, _get out,”_ the second man ordered.

Trying to regain control of her body, she desperately tested each muscle in turn, but only managed to release a drowsy moan from her busted lips.

A series of loud steps echoed, and then a door violently slammed shut, causing the room to tremble.

She heard the second man sigh.

“Sorry about that.”

The man flashed a smile down at her like he was apologizing for something as forgivable and insignificant as a guest’s poor table manners.

“Let’s get you in this chair, my dear.”

She still couldn’t speak, nor move, or even _think_ clearly. Her elbows were lifted first, and she realized her wrists were bound behind her. Her ankles were bound together too, and her running shoes dragged across the floor as she was hauled to the center of the room, where she was settled into a chair. She felt like a limbless caterpillar with her extremities bound, too close to death to even squirm away from it.

“There you are.”

She moaned again, but she still couldn’t move.

A few strands of her hair had escaped from her messy French braid. The strands dangled in front of her face as her torso was guided to lean forward over her legs. She did not fall out of the chair. He was behind her --or was he to the side of her? Either way, her wrists became untied, and that knowledge caused her sluggish heart to beat more rapidly, hungered by the prospect of freedom. She was next guided to sit up as her wrists were separated and placed comfortably in front of her, on each armrest of the chair.

“Now, let’s take a look at you.”

The phrase struck a new fear through her, and she frantically tried to regain her volition as the threat of exposure hung in the air. Her breathing quickened as she whimpered through another moan, trying to discern if she was clothed or naked.

No, she was clothed. Her running shoes were still on her feet, as were her socks. Her yoga pants were cold against her thighs and her sports bra hugged her ribs beneath her jacket.

Had she been clothed this whole time? Or... She couldn’t remember.

She noticed the feeling of a warm hand on her head, and relaxed slightly as she figured out that he was inspecting the source of blood in her hairline. “Well, it’s not ideal, but… I suppose it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

Whatever he did next caused her to hiss lightly.

He stopped. “You can feel that?”

A short moan whimpered from her throat in the form of a breathy “yhh.” Her voice was coming back to her, slowly but surely. It gave her hope.

“You shouldn’t be able to feel that,” he murmured, stepping away from her. “Your metabolism is astonishing, my dear.”

She discovered she could now blink, and her dizziness began to subside, but only just.

“It looks like another dose of _medicine_ is in order. But I worry about giving you too much.”

_Medicine._

He was a doctor. She remembered now. She remembered _him._ She remembered what happened. She’d sprained her ankle during her morning routine. He’d helped her walk to his home so she could call someone, and then….

Her terror returned along with the memories.

She vehemently tried to struggle --tried to scream-- but her wrists jerked uselessly, attached to the armrests. Her body was still weak and her mind was still clouded, but her voice fought through the fog.

“N’,n’ pleas’, _please,”_ she whispered. “I have a li’l sis’r.” She spilled out whatever semblance of words she could formulate. “Please, she’s in fos'er care, I have t’ take care ‘f her, I pr’mised her that I’d--”

“Here we go,” the doctor sighed, as if he’d heard it all before and knew exactly what was coming.

“I left her!” she gasped. “I left her, I ran ‘way but I’ve been sen’ing her pos’cards! W’were gonna live t’gether--”

“Stop,” he shook his head and turned back to her. “Just stop. That’s not going to work.”

“Wha’?” she exhaled.

“The whole, tell-me-your-life-story-and-then-i’ll-change-my-mind-and-decide-not-kill-you thing.” He shook his head again, informing her, “It doesn’t work on me.”

She was stunned.

He was going to kill her.

Of course, she’d feared that this entire time, but… to hear him _say_ it, with no humanity in his voice....

 _“...Why?”_ she lamented, almost angrily.

She was asking why he was going to kill her, but he took it to mean, _‘why doesn’t that strategy work on him?’_ Either way, his answer would have been the same.

“Because I’m a psychopath,” he answered plainly, opening his arms and rotating his torso to gesture at the room around him. “Obviously.”

She pulled her gaze off him to look around the room. She saw the carts full of tools. She saw the pliers. The scalpels. The syringes.

Oh, _God._

He was a serial killer. The one they talked about on TV.

He was _The Surgeon._

“But I’m the _nice_ one,” he offered optimistically, pointing to a shadowy staircase that led upwards. _“_ _He’s_ the mean one.”

The other man. The one who’d carried her. The one who’d kicked her face. What was his name? The Surgeon had said it, but she couldn’t remember what it was.

“And if you _listen_ to me, you’ll never have to see _him_ again.”

The Surgeon stepped closer to her, and she began to hyperventilate as she noticed what was in his hand.

He held it up proudly, the tip of the needle pointing at the sky.

“Do we have a deal?”

* * *

Malcolm heard a woman scream.

It pierced through the smoke of his memory like a cosmic ray of neon light.

But, in actuality, it wasn’t a woman’s scream. It was a short shriek, and that piercing thing he’d felt through his brain wasn’t light, it was pain.

They were both his own.

He’d cut his hand.

The boy dropped the stick he’d been whittling into the creek. He also dropped his knife, which nestled in the rocks just under the surface of the water. The water washed away the blood on the blade while the stick bobbed down the stream, escaping from its torture.

Malcolm‘s hand shook. The searing ache started to ebb into reality as the initial shock wore off. He pressed his hand to his chest, trying to staunch the flow of blood with his shirt. He picked up his knife from the stream and then hurried back to the cabin.

* * *

John washed his hand in the kitchen sink, wincing and cursing under his breath all the while. The bite marks that had punctured his calloused skin were impressive, but he’d live.

_Unlike her._

A small silver chain lay coiled like a broken snake on the countertop beside the sink. The charms of the bracelet glinted under the sunlight which filtered in through the slits of the blinds. It was a memento he'd taken from The Girl to remember her by, after she was stiff. Martin didn't like it when John stole trinkets from their victims, but John did it anyway, behind his partner's back. Martin liked to harvested his trophies, and John harvested his own.

He turned off the water with a _creak_ of the faucet. Just as he opened up the first-aid kit, Malcolm burst through the back door.

“Where’s Dad?” the boy cried.

“He’s busy,” John growled. “What’s up?” The man noticed the way the brat was holding his hand, and noticed the blood on his jacket. “What’dja do, kid?” he laughed. “Did you cut yourself?”

_How ironic._

“I thought you were ‘careful,’” John mocked as he finished wrapping his own hand. Then he motioned for the boy to come over to him. "Come on, show it to me."

Malcolm didn’t like being laughed at when he was scared and injured and panicking. He also did not move over toward John, but the man had possession of the first-aid kit, and he was blocking the main pathway through the house. “Where’s Dad?” the boy demanded, louder, so that his father might hear him if he was upstairs.

John raised his voice too --only slightly, but it was enough to silence Malcolm. “I said he’s _busy,_ now get over here or _get out.”_

Malcolm hesitated, torn between his two options. Submissively, he made himself wander closer to John, who grabbed hold of his arm to look at his hand. Malcolm braced for the pain, recoiling away as best he could in the man’s tight grip while he endured the examination.

The kitchen faucet _creaked_ again, allowing water to flow. Pulling Malcolm closer, John put the kid's hand under the running water. Malcolm hissed and tensed, but he couldn’t pull his hand out of John's grip if he tried. He was too strong. The boy held still and buried his grimaces and whimpers as best he could while John pressed some gauze on his hand, and then carelessly finished by wrapping a bandage around it.

“There. _Allllll_ better.”

It _wasn’t_ all better. Malcolm’s dad would have done a much better job treating the wound, and been much more gentle about handling it, too. Malcolm was incredibly distraught that his dad wasn’t there at the moment.

“Go upstairs until Martin comes back,” John ordered, releasing the boy.

Malcolm obeyed without question, retreating up the stairs without any sort of ‘thank you.’

_Ungrateful little son of a bitch._

John watched the brat race up the stairs, creating quite a racket through the old house. Then John glanced at the basement door.

The door remained closed.


	12. The Captive

Every noise that echoed above the room frightened her.

She knew it was him. The _‘mean’_ one. She feared his return, but her intense queasiness overpowered her terror. In fact, her nausea was only _exacerbated_ by her fear.

While she wasn’t looking forward to suffering any more brutal attacks, that wasn’t the only thing she dreaded about the man upstairs. She feared him because she knew that even if she managed to get past The Surgeon --the impossibility of which was becoming more and more apparent-- then she would have to figure out how to get past her second captor.

Her odds of escaping --of _surviving--_ were less than zero. She was going to end up on the news as another missing person. Or worse, maybe she wasn’t. Maybe nobody would notice she was gone. She had no close friends, no family, no one besides her sister, who would surely notice her lack of postcards, who would surely worry, who would--

The Girl nearly wept all over again, thinking of her little sister. Left behind. _Again._

Instead, for every second that she could think somewhat clearly, she recalculated her chance of survival, desperate for it to improve by even half a percent. She would take whatever opportunity she might be miraculously gifted with to fight back, to break free, to fly away. She would get out of here, she promised herself. She had to.

For her sister.

She was leaning forward in her seat, tied to the piece of furniture by the nylon rope which bound her wrists to the armrests and her ankles to the legs of the chair. A tube was taped to her arm, a needle in the vein of her elbow. The last dose of ‘medicine’ which The Surgeon had administered to her caused her to become violently ill. The man patiently held a bucket in front of her as she retched again.

When her convulsing had concluded, he removed the bucket and passed a cloth over her face to wipe the vomit from her lips and chin. As he walked away to dispose of the bile, she caught her breath and shivered in a cold sweat. Her throat burned from the torment of her heaving gag reflex. She could feel her body aching all over, despite the drugs that numbed her nerves. The blood on her face had dried and her bruises were starting to change color. She’d already cried her eyes out. She was too tired to produce any more tears.

“Why are you doing this?” she croaked, feebly seeking something to distract her from her hopelessness and misery. Perhaps, more than that, foolishly believing that there was some way to talk herself out of this situation.

“I need to empty your stomach before I give you a paralytic,” The Surgeon answered behind her.

She could hear him washing the vomit down the drain and then rinsing out the bucket.

“Less for me to clean up _later,”_ he explained with a smirk.

“No,” she sobbed, “Why are you going to _kill me?”_

He didn’t answer her.

She waited, listening to the running water. _Oh, what she wouldn’t give for a drink of water..._

His answer finally came.

“Because I need to teach my son a very important lesson.”

She tried to look over her shoulder, her brow furrowed in confusion as much as it was in pain.

“And you’re going to help me do that.”

* * *

Malcolm lied in the bottom bunk of his bedroom. It wasn’t really his bedroom. It was John’s, when he was little. But, for the weekend, it was his. Malcolm stared up at the wood slats that braced the bunk above him, ignoring the irrational fear in the back of his head about them breaking and allowing the weight to crush him when he least expected it.

There were scratches in the wood slats. Malcolm lifted his good hand to trace them with his finger, trying to decipher what they meant. Some were tallies, with diagonal marks across vertical ones. In that area, Malcolm counted seventeen scratches total, give or take a few which he didn’t know counted or not. He kept tracing the other carvings on the underside of the top bunk, identifying a few numbers. Twenty-one, and eight, drawn close together with two dots between them.

There were some more numbers with dots between them, but he didn’t think too hard about what the numbers could mean. He played math games in his head with the integers, trying to find something to pass the time until his dad came back. When he had exercised every math problem he could come up with in his brain, and solved them all, he fiddled with his pocket knife --keeping it folded shut. Bored, lonely, and miserable, he waited for an eternity.

The taxidermied buck stared down at him from the opposite wall. He stared back, hoping that the longer he looked at it, the more familiar he’d become with it, and the less creepy and depressing of a sight it would be.

The dead deer won the staring contest.

Before long, Malcolm’s discomfort level rose beyond what he could tolerate, and he got out of bed to go to the window, yearning for fresh air and sunlight. He folded his arms against the edge and pressed his forehead to the glass, watching the overclouded sky and the petrified forest. The station wagon and the truck were still parked side by side; wood and steel complimented by the neighboring dark green paint. The paint nearly matched the color of the dense pines that surrounded the small clearing which served as the cabin’s yard.

Malcolm scanned the treeline. The pines were so still, they seemed frozen. _Time_ felt frozen. 

Was his father out _there?_ Hunting?

Malcolm felt sick. He didn’t know what made him more nauseous, the thought of being stuck in the cabin alone with John, or the thought of his dad out there taking a life as effortlessly as if it was that of a tiny bug’s.

He hoped his dad came back soon, wherever he was.

* * *

“You have a son?” she asked.

“I do,” he answered.

“What’s his name?”

“You don’t need to know that.”

She tried again, reasoning, “What’s it matter? You’re going to kill me anyway, right?”

“Yup.”

“So, what’s his name?” Her voice quivered, her throat still hoarse.

“What’s your sister’s name?” he countered.

She hesitated. After she was dead, would The Surgeon go after her little sister? Would he be able to track her down by only knowing her name?

No, he wouldn’t. They had different surnames, and she had done well to cover her tracks since she’d run away. It was worth the risk to try and earn his trust.

“Eve,” she told him truthfully.

“Well, whaddya know? My son’s name is _Adam.”_

That was a lie. She knew it was.

“Okay,” she agreed, going along with it. “Adam.” After swallowing the lingering taste of her own sick, she asked, “What lesson are you gonna teach Adam?”

“That death is nothing to be afraid of.”

She could tell from the tone of his voice that their conversation was over. She grew more scared. She needed more time. She needed to find a way out of here. She needed to find the right thing to say to change his mind.

But that wouldn’t work on him. There was nothing she could say.

“So don’t be afraid, alright?”

He picked up another syringe, and approached her.

“You’re not going to feel a thing.”

“Wait. _Wait!”_

He didn’t wait.

A cloth muffled her scream as her head was tilted back painfully far. The stretching of her neck alone was enough to strangle her scream. His hand was under her chin, his grip tight around her jaw as he adjusted the cloth over her mouth with two fingers, and laid his other wrist over her exposed throat.

What followed was a light pinpoint of pressure on the side of her neck, which transformed into a sharp _prick_ that she couldn’t flinch away from. The large needle penetrated deep into her vein like a flu shot from hell. Trying to find her voice, she wailed into the muffling cloth, immensely dissatisfied with the lack of strength in the sound.

“Shhh, shh shh. Go to sleep, my dear.”

She felt the pressure of her hot blood beating against the foreign object, mingling with the ice cold toxins which it gave her. When the syringe slid out of her, emptied, she cried again, but no sound escaped her. A chill permeated through her neck, up to her brain, and down to her body.

“Go to sleep,” he hushed soothingly, relaxing his grip on her jaw. Removing the cloth from her mouth, he gazed at her upturned face, the top of her head pressed against his stomach. He watched her agonized expression shift into one of peace --like she was undergoing a beautiful metamorphosis.

The Girl became so still, she seemed frozen in a shell of herself. A chrysalis.

He knew that for her, time felt frozen.

* * *

Malcolm jolted awake from another nightmare.

A chill permeated through his bones, freezing him in place until the effects of the nightmare wore off. His ears were ringing, like another gunshot had fired near him. Had it? Or had that been part of his dream? 

Maybe it hadn’t been a gunshot. Maybe it’d been another scream.

He didn’t know what he’d heard --or if he’d only heard it in his head, or in reality as well-- but all of his senses were alert and his body tingled with adrenaline. He slid out of the bottom bunk and went to the window again. The grey sky was a different shade than before. It was darker now, and he suddenly feared he’d spent the entire day in that room. Perhaps he’d be doomed to spend all night in it, too.

He ran to the door, intending to go find his dad even if John yelled at him for it.

But the door was locked.

The boy rattled it, trying to twist the circular knob with both hands, but it wouldn’t budge. His heart beat faster, and he tried to remember if he’d heard anyone come upstairs. Had John locked it after he’d fallen asleep?

As Malcolm’s panic rose, he noticed something else about the door.

The scratches.

The entire bottom half of the door was marked with chips, dents, and scuffs--like something else had been trapped in here before. Some kind of clawed animal, or maybe even a monster.

The boy quelled his fear, extinguished his imagination, and studied the marks more closely. Some were tallies, akin to those on the wooden slats above the bottom bunk. Some were numbers. Some were sad faces, or angry faces. Some formed images, like cave drawings that might tell a story if he was clever enough to read the foreign language of pictures.

He followed the etchings around the room, discovering that they were  _ all over - _ -the walls, the bedposts, the window frame, even the _ceiling._

Even the deer.

The young stag was scratched too, a long scar running directly over one of the eyes that had stared Malcolm down earlier. The mounted head continued to stare him down, its damaged eyes a glassy abyss.

Malcolm began to hyperventilate.

The room had been filled with claw marks this whole time, and the boy hadn’t even realized it.

Or maybe they  _ hadn’t  _ been there this whole time. Maybe something had crept inside and created them while he slept. Something unseen. Something that fed off the darkness. Something that made people disappear.

_ And the next thing you know... _

“DAD!” Malcolm screamed, running for the door again. He slammed into it, pounding as hard as he could with his fists.  _ “DAD!!” _

If this was a dream, he needed to wake up, _ now. _

And if it wasn’t a dream….

“JOHN!?” Malcolm screamed next. “JOHN THIS ISN’T FUNNY, LET ME OUT!!!”

No one answered him.

_ “LET ME OUT!” _

Time was no longer frozen. It now moved as quickly as a falling star. That star was the sun, which plummeted behind the mountains like God had fast-forwarded the universe.

Darkness returned.


	13. The Crossing

“John did _not_ lock you upstairs,” Dr. Whitly chuckled, thinking that was ridiculous.

“Yes, he did!” the profiler argued adamantly.

“No, he didn’t!” Dr. Whitly whined, “That’s absurd.”

Malcolm sucked in a breath to renew his patience. It was wearing thin. “Did I, or did I _not_ cut my hand?” he interrogated.

“I…” Martin hesitated, his eyes scanning a nonexistent horizon. “I don’t remember, Malcolm.”

“You don’t ‘ _remember?’_ Really?” the profiler scoffed. 

_How ironic._

“You don’t remember if your _own son_ cut his hand open?” Malcolm accused harshly, using the man’s self-acclaimed ‘doting father persona’ against him. What a load of horse shit.

Martin picked at his molars with his tongue, annoyed. “You said so yourself, John took care of it,” he growled. His hand lifted to gesture at the consultant. “Obviously, you were fine, otherwise he would have come and--”

_Oops._

“Got you?” Malcolm finished for him, grinning at the prey he’d snared in his verbal trap. “Is that what you were going to say?”

Martin tossed his hands into the air and gave up. _“Sure,”_ he hissed with a painfully bright smile.

“Were you still in the cabin?” Malcolm demanded.

He was. He _knew_ he was. He just wanted Martin to _say it._

Dr. Whitly glared at the profiler with a low-churning anger. “You know, I _really_ don’t remember, son.”

 _“Bullshit,”_ Malcolm barked, eager to provoke another burst of anger from his father. It was the only way to get him to tell the truth.

But Dr. Whitly didn’t get upset. He sat in his desk chair and coolly held the boy’s gaze, keeping his snide remarks, pricked emotions, and exclusive truth smothered unfathomably deep within himself.

After a few moments of an intense stare-down, The Surgeon simply shrugged at his son, refusing to say anything else.

Malcolm grit his teeth and tore his glare away from the man. He paced back and forth across the room, looking down at the red line painted on the ground as he followed it like a tightrope. While thoughtfully rubbing a hand over his stubbled chin, he dug through his brain to come up with another angle of attack.

He spun on his heel and pointed back at his father. “If I _wasn’t_ upstairs, then where _was_ I?” the clever consultant asked with an anticipatory small grin, like it was a very tricky and very important question --one that he doubted his father would get right.

Dr. Whitly broke his stubborn silence to correct the flaw in the boy’s question. “I never said you weren’t upstairs,” he reminded. “I only said you weren’t _locked_ upstairs.”

“But I _was!”_

 _“No,_ you _weren’t,_ ” Martin emphasized, determined to disprove this figment of the child’s imagination. “I could hear you running around between rooms. Flying a model airplane, or something. Kid stuff.” 

Malcolm grinned, his trap once again successful. “So you _didn’t_ leave the cabin.”

Dr. Whitly inhaled a large sigh to refuel his patience, then rambled on to stake his claim of innocence in the conversation. “Look, I remember talking with John in the kitchen, making dinner, and hearing you playing upstairs --again, as _happy_ as a clam--”

Malcolm made another expression of disgust.

“--and when I called you down for supper, you came,” Martin concluded. “No. Locked. Doors.”

His son glared at him, but his voice was quiet. “You were with The Girl.”

Dr. Whitly held his gaze evenly, guarding everything and yielding nothing.

“In the basement,” Malcolm whispered. “That’s where you were.”

He just wanted his father to _admit_ it. To stop _lying,_ for once.

“Was that when I did it?” Martin inquired. “Was that when I _‘killed’_ her?” he drawled mockingly. “When you were _‘locked up’_ in that room all day?”

Malcolm ordered, “You tell me. Was it?”

Dr. Whitly grew more animated as he scolded, “No, nono, the game doesn’t work like that, Malcolm. _You’re_ the one with amnesia. _You’re_ the one who claims you ‘remember,’ so tell me what else you remember. I can’t fill every gap in your mem--”

 _“Yes,_ you _can!”_ the profiler cried. “And this is _not_ a _game!_ This is my childhood! _”_ He bent at the knees and pointed at his own chest, yelling, _“_ You _destroyed_ my childhood!”

Martin raised his voice too. “That’s not true!” he snarled. “I gave you a _wonderful_ childhood!”

“How can you _say that?”_ Malcolm wailed in disbelief, his expression twisted in agony. “You drugged me! You lied to me! You hurt me!”

As expected, Martin jumped out of his seat, roaring, “I _protected_ you!”

As if someone had flipped a light switch within him, Malcolm’s expression blinked back to a calm, curious one. His anguish vanished as he dropped the act. His father had taken the bait hook, line, and sinker.

“From what?” Malcolm asked. He latched onto the thread of truth he’d discovered, intending to use it to unravel his father’s entire defense.

Martin didn’t answer him. He blinked, stunned by his son’s two-faced trap. The Surgeon suddenly looked very tired, maybe even defeated, and tried to regain his composure.

“From you?” Malcolm prompted, refusing to lose any momentum in his interrogation.

“From the truth,” Dr. Whitly murmured, shutting down. He’d been hurt by Malcolm's cruel trick.

 _“Tell me_ the truth,” Malcolm begged.

Martin didn’t tell him.

The man moved away, retreating to the bookshelf behind his desk and scanning the array of spines within it as if choosing a book to escape into.

Malcolm didn’t allow his father to run away from the discussion. The profiler stepped forward, crossing the red line.

Dr. Whitly glanced at him sharply, almost as if he was frightened by the consultant’s unexpected advance.

But _Malcolm,_ however, was not scared in the least. “You don’t have to protect me anymore,” he said, then muttered with some hint of bitterness, “If that’s really what you thought you were doing.”

Martin eyed the person who had crossed over into his territory, then recognized that person as his child and professed, “It _was_ what I was doing.” 

“I don’t think so.” Malcolm shook his head, then tilted it, analyzing, “I think you were trying to protect _yourself.”_

Slowly, Martin abandoned the bookshelf, and faced the profiler. “I was trying to protect _both_ of us.”

“Well, stop,” Malcolm smiled, shrugging. He nearly chuckled as he opened his arms and rotated his torso to gesture at the situation around them. “You’re already in prison, and I’m already fucked-up. So... just tell me.”

Dr. Whitly’s hawk eyes darted down to the profiler’s shoes, calculating the distance between them and his own slippers. Then he calculated the distance between the boy and the red line behind him.

“Alright, Malcolm.”

The Surgeon took a step forward, the tether dragging loosely on the ground with plenty of slack in its serpentine shape.

Malcolm did not back away.

The serial killer came closer, lifting his chin to challenge, “You want the truth?”

Malcolm accepted the challenge, and still did not move.

His father came to stand directly in front of him, and the consultant had to keep his head held high to maintain their gaze. Even well into his adulthood, Malcolm still wasn’t quite as tall as his dad.

The Surgeon gazed down at the brave little soul standing before him; so grown-up, yet still with so much to learn.

With a nod and a squint, he vowed, “I’ll tell you the truth.”


	14. The Plan

Butter and fat sizzled in a skillet, melting into a bubbling puddle of flavor. The clumps of suet were pushed aside as a seasoned slab of red venison was laid in the pan, followed by another, and then a third. As the meat slowly browned, Martin moved over to finish peeling and dicing the potatoes on the counter beside the stove. It was a small kitchen, especially in comparison to his kitchen at home, with limited wares and ingredients. But he would make do.

He could hear Malcolm upstairs, entertaining himself with some of John’s old model trucks. Even at ten years old, the boy made fantastically enthusiastic screeching, crashing, and explosion sounds as he gently hit the toys together and rolled them across the walls. 

His son’s imagination was boundless. That was a good thing. It was one of those crucial qualities that made for a master artist. Martin would know.

The man smiled as he prepared dinner, fondly listening to the boy’s adventures upstairs.

Behind him, John let out a ragged sigh of annoyance. He sat on a stool on the other side of the kitchen island, leaning his elbows on the surface as he held his head in his hands, likely having another one of his splitting migraines.

“Relax, John, he’s not hurting anything.”

“I thought that was the whole _problem,_ Martin,” John grumbled. “Him not hurting anything.”

Martin remained silent, focusing on carving into the potatoes as the meat seared beside him.

John continued, “He’s not like you. He’s not going to _be_ like you.”

Martin gazed down at the slender knife in his hand as it slid effortlessly through the soft vegetable’s skin.

“He could be,” The Surgeon muttered quietly. “One day.”

John scoffed behind him and rubbed his eyes.

“He has potential,” Martin advocated. He moved back to the stove to grab the turning fork and flip over the venison. “Great potential. I know he does.”

He just… had to reach it.

Martin proceeded to admit something to his partner in crime. “I brought him with us this weekend… to teach him.”

 _“Teach_ him?” John moved his hands away from his eyes, wincing in confusion. “Teach him _what?”_

“Teach him…” Martin made a face and shrugged. “About what we do. About the _art_ of it. So he understands.” Gesturing in the air with the fork, he added, “Not all at once, of course. Baby steps.” He continued turning over the venison in the skillet. “But, eventually, he will… he will be _adept_ at it. Like me.”

“He couldn’t even shoot a goddamn deer!”

“He wasn’t ready for that, yet.” Martin explained. “But this time will be different.”

“How?”

“Because I’m going to give him…” Martin tilted his head, gesturing with the fork between poking at the sizzling meat. “A little _activity.”_

“An activity?”

“Yes,” Martin smiled down at the food, babbling, “A scavenger hunt, of sorts. I’m going to leave a trail for him to follow in the woods.”

The venison sloshed around in the boiling butter, its raw pink color caramelizing to a rich brown.

“Some blood, maybe a few teeth, discarded clothing,” he listed. “We’ll stumble across her when we go hiking tomorrow. He’ll have a _litany_ of questions about what happened to her, and together, we’ll find out all the answers.”

John grumbled behind him, “I don’t know about that, man. You sure that’s gonna work?”

Martin grinned excitedly, able to picture exactly how it’ll go. “I’m sure. Malcolm likes… _._ _learning,_ and _solving_ things. He’ll get a hands-on lesson about the human body, and how it responds to death. I’ll show him that it’s nothing to be frightened of. It’ll be perfect.”

“Plus,” he added, “He likes to think that he’s _helping_ people. So, when we… you know, cut her open and explore around, figure out ‘how she died’… he’ll think he’s helping solve a mystery!”

It would be a _game_ for the boy. One he would learn to love, after the initial shock.

“Alright,” John agreed with a long sigh. “Whatever you say, Martin.” He slid off the stool and left without arguing, lighting another cigarette before he even made it through the back door to go smoke. 

Martin smiled as he finished preparing the meal.

Everything would turn out just fine.

He had everything under control, and everything was going according to plan.

“Son,” he called up the stairs. “Dinner’s ready!”

* * *

Malcolm stared at him, dumbstruck.

“You… you were going to….?”

Dr. Whitly waited patiently, allowing the profiler to process what he’d told him.

“You were going to have me… _find_ her?” the consultant winced, shaking his head. He was as equally disgusted as he was shocked. “Find her _body?”_ he corrected, raising his voice. “In the _woods?_ You were going to make a fucking _game_ out of it!?”

“I _did_ make a game out of it,” The Surgeon answered.

He had succeeded. His plan had come to fruition.

“And just as I predicted,” he purred darkly, “You _loved_ it.”

Dr. Whitly leaned forward, whispering slowly in the boy’s face, _“That’s_ the part you don’t remember.”

Malcolm struggled to breathe.

He _did_ remember, now.

* * *

Malcolm’s footfalls were light and timid as he carefully made his way down the creaky staircase. “Where’s John?” he asked, looking around the first floor before committing to descend the last three steps.

“He went outside for a bit,” his father answered, setting the table. “He’ll be back. You hungry?”

Malcolm glanced at the steaming plates of steak and potatoes and green beans. The dishes were five-star-restaurant worthy, and nothing about them looked unappetizing, but he answered, “Not really.” Even as his empty stomach growled, he did not change his answer. He was too upset to eat.

“How is your hand? John said you had an accident.”

“It’s okay, I guess,” Malcolm mumbled despondently, sulking over into the kitchen.

“Do you want me to look at it?”

Malcolm lifted his hand as his father came over to him. The bandage was carefully unwound, the bloody gauze removed, and the boy’s palm gently tilted in the glow of the overhead lights.

“Oh, that’s not too bad,” his father hummed warmly. “Just a scratch. You’ll be alright.”

It was not just a scratch, but Malcolm believed him when he said he would be alright. Martin opened the first aid kit. The boy stood still as the doctor gently cleaned the semi-healed cut with a small alcohol wipe, blew on the raw skin to erase the stinging sensation, then reapplied some soft gauze to his palm.

While he worked, Malcolm took the opportunity to finally tell him, “John pointed his shotgun at me.”

The way his father reacted to the news, John may as well have pointed a flower at the child. “When?” the man asked curiously, not alarmed in the slightest. 

“This morning, when you were unpacking the car,” Malcolm answered, watching his dad wrap a new bandage around his hand. “He said it was a self defense gun, in case… in case…”

He’d forgotten what case. Scrunching his face and trying to remember, he slowly picked each word out of his foggy memory.

Martin waited, still holding the boy’s wrapped hand in both of his own.

With some difficulty, Malcolm finally reiterated the quote. “‘In case your dad gets any crazy ideas.’”

Martin laughed, his face swelling into an expression of delight.

Malcolm did not think what John had said or done was funny. He was disappointed and confused to learn that his father thought so.

“He didn’t mean that, son. He was just joking,” Martin chuckled, releasing the boy’s hand and returning to the dining table. “Acting like an _idiot,_ as always.”

Malcolm wasn’t done talking. He followed his father. “He said the dog was your dog.”

“Well…” Martin pulled out a chair for him and then took his own seat while glancing to the back door. “I guess you could say it was _both_ of ours.”

Malcolm slid into his chair and clarified, “So it _was_ your dog, too?”

“It lived with _John,_ but.... Sure. It was my dog, too,” Martin answered with a flash of a smile, picking up his utensils. He gestured at Malcolm’s plate with his steak knife. “Eat your dinner before it gets cold.”

Malcolm didn’t eat his dinner.

“He said you were the one who shot it.”

His father paused for a moment. “Then... he lied to you,” he said, proceeding to cut into his steak. “Perhaps he was trying to make another _joke.”_

Malcolm didn’t know if he believed him, but he didn’t want to push it.

He didn’t want to find out the truth.

“What if he shoots _me?”_ he asked, holding his hands in his lap.

Martin looked up sharply. “What? Malcolm, he’s not-- what are you--?” He chuckled uncomfortably. “Why are you asking that, son?”

Malcolm looked down at his hands, wondering when they would start shaking again, and how long the tremors would last, this time.

“John’s not going to _shoot_ you, he was just being an _idiot_ this morning.”

Malcolm’s voice was small. “I don’t think he likes me, Dad.”

“Of course he does! Why wouldn’t he?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t think he likes me.”

After a moment, Martin continued cutting into his steak and eased, “He wouldn’t have taken care of your hand if he didn’t like you, son.”

The child massaged his hands together and mumbled, “I wish you would have been there to look at it instead.” His misery gave way to his curiosity, and he looked up to ask, “Where were you?”

“I had to do a few chores,” his father explained. “Unpack, and... put away the tent. Put fuel in the generator, get dinner ready. Things like that.”

Malcolm thought it had sure taken him a long time to do all of that.

“I also found a _leak_ in the basement,” Martin added as he skewered some potatoes and green beans onto his fork. “I believe I fixed it now, but you best not wander down there, alright?"

Malcolm made a face. “A water leak?”

“A gas leak,” Martin told him. “It’s dangerous. You’d need to wear a special mask if you want to go down there. Just stay up here, and you’ll be fine.”

Malcolm wasn’t planning on going down into the basement. He suspected it was more dark and terrifying than any other room in that creepy old cabin.

“I want to go home."

Martin appeared wounded to hear that. “Home? But we just got here, son.”

Malcolm didn’t retract his statement.

“Would you have rather gone to the Hamptons?” His father’s next question was different from the rest. It lacked kindness. “With the _girls?”_

Malcolm didn’t look at him, pouting to himself.

“You’re lucky your mother allowed you to come on this trip, Malcolm.” 

His father’s fork scraped against his plate. 

“Ainsley was _begging_ to come up here. Did you know that?”

Malcolm didn’t answer him. 

“Should I have brought _her_ instead of _you?”_

“No,” Malcolm grumbled. He didn't want Ainsley to experience this. Being bullied by John. Being stuck up in that scary room. Being surrounded by trophies of dead things --and being mocked for not liking them.

“So be glad you're here, alright?” Martin suggested, a layer of optimism returning to his voice.

Malcolm nodded, but his thoughts were still busy with things that solidified a frown on his face. “Are you gonna sleep with your gun tonight?” he asked, tracing his fingers over the bandage on his hand.

“Always do.”

“Then…” Malcolm hesitated. “Can I sleep in your room tonight?”

His father gave him a look. “You’re not a baby anymore, Malcolm.”

Malcolm’s frown deepened with pain. He knew the man was going to say that.

“Are you worried about John?”

The child didn’t respond, unwilling to be made fun of for his ‘irrational’ fears.

“He’s not going to hurt you, son.”

Malcolm didn’t believe him.

“Malcolm.”

The boy looked up at his dad, fearing his disappointment and bracing to hear another subtle scolding.

But Martin’s gaze was gentle. “Do you know _why_ John is my friend?”

“Why?”

“Because he _listens_ to me,” Martin emphasized. “You're safe, son. He’s not going to hurt you.” The man continued sawing and skewering his food. “He’s _dumb,_ but he’s not _that_ dumb.”

Malcolm felt a little better, but he pressed his lips together and stared at the untouched plate of food in front of him. The meat was no longer steaming, and the vegetables were growing cold.

Still, he did not eat.

“...Please?” he whispered, begging once more for his dad to allow him to sleep in his room that night.

But begging never worked on Martin.

“I said ‘no,’” the man finalized.

“I could sleep on the floor,” Malcolm offered quickly.

Martin studied the child, his mild annoyance battling with the brief calculations that ticked in his cognitive mind. If the boy was willing to push it, and willing to bargain, then Martin would bargain.

“If I let you sleep in my room, will you stop pouting?” he asked, lifting his brows.

“Yes.”

“Will you be _happy_ you’re here, and _participate_ in activities?"

“Yes.”

Martin nodded, gesturing with his silver utensils, “Then you may.” Smiling triumphantly down at his half-finished plate, he chuckled, “And you don’t have to sleep on the floor. You’re not a d--”

He stopped himself, but it was too late. He may as well finish the word. “You’re not a dog.” He flashed a concealing smile at his son and focused on his plate again.

Reminded of the sad story about the dog, Malcolm tried to return a feeble smile in forgiveness, but his forgiveness wasn’t genuine, and his smile wasn’t convincing.

“We’re going to have a good weekend, son,” Martin promised, moving on. “A very _fun_ weekend. One you’ll never forget.” He gestured again at Malcolm's food. “Now eat up. We have a big day tomorrow.”

Malcolm picked up his fork and his knife, starting to saw into the venison steak. “What are we gonna do?”

“We’re gonna go on a hike, maybe do a bit of fishing,” Martin listed. “Perhaps we’ll find some bear tracks, or a treasure chest full of gold,” he enticed with a playful grin.

Malcolm wanted to be excited about those things, but he also didn’t want to be tricked again.

“I don't want to shoot anything,” he said, remembering what happened last time they went camping together. Before his father could reference the arrangement they’d just made, Malcolm elaborated, “I’ll do anything else, but… not that.”

Martin agreed to the boy’s contingency easily enough. “Deal,” he declared. “You don't have to shoot anything this time.”

Malcolm found it a little easier to breathe, and smiled back in gratitude. Skewering some potatoes --but not any green beans-- with his fork, he asked, “Is John coming with us, too?”

“No,” Martin smirked. “Just you and me. We’ll have some father-son time, okay?”

“Okay,” Malcolm grinned, relieved.

“Are you looking forward to that?”

“Yeah,” the boy answered earnestly, taking a bite of his food.

The Surgeon smiled.

“Me too.”


	15. The Hunt

Through the night, the sky wept.

The earth was soaked the next morning, but the father and son were bundled up with raincoats, beanie hats, gloves, and boots. They went to the creek, where Malcolm showed his father the marks he’d carved into the trees the day prior so he didn’t get lost. The boy tried to find where his whittling stick had floated, but he couldn't find it. They continued on.

Martin paved a steady path up the gentle slope as Malcolm ran ahead of him. The child frequently returned to orbit his father before launching himself away again to scout ahead, eager to follow every tiny trail that led off from the main one. Martin’s Winchester was strapped to his back, poking up towards the sky and bobbing with every step. His breath curled in the cold morning air as they hiked up the slope, treading slowly and casually while enjoying the beautiful scenery.

Despite the drenched greenery, it was a perfect day.

Malcolm searched the trees for bird nests and combed through the underbrush for more sticks with the intent of finding the best ones to use as make-believe swords or practical walking sticks. He gave the first suitable sword/walking stick he found to his dad, then went off to find another one for himself.

But Malcolm stopped exploring when he saw something. It was a black jacket, hanging from the branches of an aspen tree. He walked up to it and warily touched it. It was sopping wet, like a dead animal; gross and intriguing. It was accented with two blue streaks down the sides.

“Dad!” he called over his shoulder before inspecting the article of clothing more closely.

“What’d you find, son?

“It’s a coat!” Malcolm called back.

“Oh. Maybe someone lost it,” his father guessed nonchalantly. Twigs snapped under his boots as he made his way over to the boy.

Malcolm didn’t think that was what happened. He took the jacket off the branch and stretched it out to get a full look at it. 

It was torn.

With a furrowed brow, he lowered the jacket and scanned the forest around them. He ran off again, leaving his father behind as he ran towards another article of clothing he spied in the bushes. It was a shoe, also soaking wet from the overnight rain. His heart pounded as he ran off again to another object --a second shoe-- following the trail of discarded things.

Martin smiled and followed him.

Running over a small hill, Malcolm stopped dead in his tracks as a fearful chill washed over him.

_“Dad!”_

There was a body.

A woman; barefoot, face-down in the dirt wearing yoga pants and a tank top. Her hair was half-freed from a messy braid and her skin was so deathly pale it was almost tinted green.

She wasn’t moving.

 _“Dad!!”_ Malcolm yelled again. _“Hurry!!”_

His father did not hurry. It was as if he was deaf to the terror in the child’s voice. “What is it?”

“It’s a girl!” Malcolm cried. The fear which previously frozen him in place now shattered like a sheet of ice. He barrelled down the small hill towards the lady. “She needs help!”

Crashing onto the ground beside her, Malcolm put his hands on her back and shook her. She didn't respond to his voice, and she was stiff like a board. With some effort, the boy turned her over to lie on her back. Her expression was blank. Her eyes were stuck open and glossed over. There was mud smeared across her soft lips, which were colored blue with the cold.

As his terror returned, Malcolm searched his brain for what to do. Hyperventilating with panic, he put his hands over top of each other and started pressing down on her chest --in the middle, on her sternum, like his dad had taught him.

_Keep your arms straight. Put all of your weight into it. If you feel cracking, you’re doing it right. Don’t stop until help arrives._

Help didn’t arrive.

“It’s too late for that,” Martin told the frantic child, walking up behind him.

Malcolm did not stop performing chest compressions.

His father’s voice was calm and gentle. “She’s been dead for a long time, son.”

Malcolm’s compressions grew weaker as he began to doubt their effectiveness. “How long?”

“Probably all night, at least. See the frost on her eyelashes?”

Malcolm stared into the woman’s vacant eyes and slowly stopped pumping his hands over her chest. He was distraught, but also numbed. Caught in a daze of shock. “What do we do?”

Martin knelt down beside him, one hand still wrapped around his walking stick. “Well, we should probably find out who she is, and how she died, don’t you think?”

Malcolm blinked, then searched her clothes. Nothing was in the pockets of her yoga pants, and there wasn’t anything in the jacket either. She didn’t have a wallet or a phone or keys or anything that they could use to figure out who she was.

The boy glanced at her ice-cold hands. “The police can still get her fingerprints, right?” he asked.

“I’m sure they could,” Martin assured him. “As long as they're not... _too_ damaged.”

 _Damaged?_ Malcolm hesitated, then grabbed the lady’s hand and looked at the underside of it. Her fingertips were raw and pink; the skin having been sanded off of them.

Martin tipped his head and pretended to be disappointed. Optimistically, he said, “Well, that’s alright. They can also check her dental records, after looking at her teeth."

He gestured at the woman’s face with a pointed finger. “But... I’m willing to bet she doesn’t _have_ any teeth.”

Malcolm looked at the lady’s sunken cheeks, however, he didn’t dare to look _inside_ her slack-jawed mouth. He struggled to breathe, breathlessly asking, “What happened to her? Was she sick or something?”

His dad was a doctor. He would have the answer, and if he didn’t, then he would know how to find it.

“Maybe. Does she feel thin?”

Malcolm put his hand on the lady’s bloated abdomen, but he couldn’t think clearly enough to formulate an answer.

“Can you see her ribs through her skin?”

Operating on auto-pilot, Malcolm pulled back the bottom of the lady’s tank top to look at her tummy. The fabric was stiff, and the layer of ice that had formed over it cracked as he moved it away from the lady’s belly. Still, he couldn’t formulate an answer. He’d never seen a dead body before, and he didn’t know how to analyze it.

Yet.

“We need to do what’s called an _autopsy._ Do you remember what that is?”

Malcolm did remember what that was. It was what doctors did when they needed to find out how someone had died.

And they had to cut them open to do it.

“Here.” His father set down his walking stick and moved closer. “Pull out your knife.”

Malcolm didn’t remember pulling out his knife. He was too stunned to speak, having trouble discerning if this was a dream, a nightmare, or reality. The answer soon became clear as he was boxed-in by his father’s arms, the boy’s back against his chest, and his own pocket knife placed in his small hands. Malcolm didn’t move, yet the knife settled over the woman’s stomach all the same as his father’s hands guided the blade to its proper place.

“Put it here,” his father instructed, already maneuvering the child’s hand for him. Helplessly, Malcolm was forced to hold the tool, his body manipulated like a puppet. “Now, let’s see what we find.”

Malcolm stared down at the knife cusped in his hands, which were cusped in his father’s. 

It was then that the true scavenger hunt began.

* * *

“That’s what happened,” the profiler whispered, petrified like a deer in the headlights.

Dr. Whitly made a face, exhaling a hesitant, _“Wellllll…”_

Malcolm blinked, breathlessly asking, “What? What is it?”

“That’s… not _exactly_ what happened, but…” Dr. Whitly made a different face and shrugged, accepting the consultant’s iteration of the story. “Sure!” he smiled brightly.

Unexpectedly, he took a step _back,_ away from the boy, to return to the bookshelf. “Let’s go with that version,” he concluded frivolously.

Malcolm was stunned all over again. _“What?_ No, what happened?” he demanded, following his father to the bookcase.

“Nothing,” Martin chirped. As he skimmed his collection of literature, he assured, “Your version is fine. We’ll leave it at that.”

Pushing the desk chair out of his way, Malcolm stormed further into the forbidden space, marching straight up to the man. “No, tell me the truth!”

Dr. Whitly did not pay the intruder any mind, instead choosing a book to take out of his shelf and finger through. “No, it’s alright. The way you remember it is--”

“Is _wrong!”_ Malcolm interrupted, flabbergasted. “You said it was wrong!”

“It’s _fine!”_ Dr. Whitly repeated. His voice had a higher-pitched, _fake_ tone to it. “Now, take my advice and leave well-enough alone.” He scanned the open pages of the book, disinterested in continuing the conversation. However, he did mutter, “You said so yourself, you’re _already_ fucked-up.”

Malcolm pressed his lips together as a burst of anger took control over him. Before he knew what he was doing, he lunged to grab Dr. Whitly. He flipped the man around and shoved him against the bookcase, gripping tightly onto his collar.

Dr. Whitly’s chosen book clattered to the floor.

“I came here for the truth, and I'm _going_ to get it!” the consultant snarled, threatening, “Even if I have to _beat_ it out of you with my _bare hands!”_

Dr. Whitly struggled to keep a smile off his face, but he held his hands up in surrender as the edges of the bookshelves dug uncomfortably into his back. “It's not something you’re going to _like,_ son,’ he warned, anticipation tugging at his grin while laughter hinted beneath his voice.

 _“Tell me!”_ Malcolm screamed, at his wits’ end.

Martin hesitated, his grin sinister and wide, then gently laid his hands over Malcolm’s wrists --not to remove his grip from his collar, but simply to touch the boy again. He hadn’t made physical contact with his son in over twenty years.

“She wasn’t... quite… _dead…_ yet,” The Surgeon whispered.

 _“What?”_ Malcolm hissed. Desperately, he continued staring into the depth of his father’s eyes.

“When you found her,” Martin explained, “she was still alive.”

* * *

“She’s hurt, dad,” Malcolm fretted, glancing over the lady.

One of her eyes was swollen up, and the left half of her face was puffy and discolored with a series of nasty bruises. Her clothes were soaked as equally with blood as they were with rainwater, and one side of her ribcage was caved-in, giving her figure an asymmetrical, crooked shape.

She wheezed with every slow, unstable breath, and any words she tried to form only came out in the form of a weakly-groaning, _“Nnnnhn”_ sound from between her busted lips.

She couldn't speak. Couldn't move.

The boy whirled around as his father caught up to stand behind him. “Can you help her!?”

Without even kneeling down to check her vitals, the world-class Surgeon shook his head and said, “I’m sorry, son, I can’t.”

With tears in his eyes, Malcolm asked through a frightened whine, “Is she _dying?”_

Martin crouched down beside him, sadly sighing, “No, but… I'm sure she wishes she was.”

Malcolm turned to look back at the girl, feeling helpless and lost. All he could do was hold one of her limp hands in both of his own.

She tried to speak again, but no words came out. All that came out was a low, moaning, _“Nnnnhn.”_

“She’s in a lot of pain, Malcolm.”

The ten-year-old sniffled through his tears. “What can we do?” he croaked, desperately looking back at his father.

“There’s only one thing we can do for her,” the man answered.

He didn’t elaborate.

Malcolm didn’t know what he was referring to.

Martin spoke slowly and warmly, helping his son through this emotional process --which he himself had no emotions for. “Do you remember what your friend at school had to do to his terrier last year?”

Malcolm winced as he felt the need to cry all over again.

Martin retold the story, “Your friend had to take his terrier to the veterinarian when it was very, very sick. The vet said that the creature was in too much pain, and that it would be _cruel_ to keep him alive, remember?”

“They killed it...” Malcolm translated, his heart clenching with agony as he uttered the words. He gripped the injured lady’s hand tighter.

“Yes,” Martin answered softly. “But… they killed it because they didn’t want it to suffer anymore. It was a noble, good, and _compassionate_ thing to do.”

The boy squeezed his eyes shut and cried.

It _wasn’t_ a noble thing.

Knights didn’t go around killing people who needed their help. That’s not what their swords were meant for.

Beside him, his father took out his pocket knife.

“It’s the only thing we can do for her, Malcolm. You don’t want her to keep suffering, do you?”

Malcolm quickly reached over to put a hand on his father’s wrist. “Don’t. Don’t, please don’t,” he begged, sobbing again.

He didn’t know which was worse, watching that lady die, or watching his dad perform the act of killing her. It would be like watching _two_ deaths instead of watching just one. The second his father took that stranger’s life, the hero who Malcolm knew and loved would die before his eyes as well.

“There has to be another way,” the boy pleaded.

“Look at her, Malcolm. Look at where we are. We’re in the middle of nowhere. There’s no one around to help. We are nowhere near a hospital, and I can’t fix what’s wrong with her without a ventilator, and an EKG, and…” the man listed other things, most of which Malcolm was unfamiliar with --big, complicated machines and tools and supplies which only hospitals had.

“We can’t simply put a band-aid on this, son.”

Malcolm looked down at his other hand, the one still curled around the lady’s raw, cold, unmoving fingertips. A bandage was wrapped around that hand, from when he’d cut himself yesterday with his knife. He remembered how much that’d hurt. He remembered how scared he’d felt. This lady was a hundred times more hurt, and a hundred times more scared.

Perhaps his father was right.

But he couldn’t bear the thought of taking a life. A terrier-- a _dog,_ a _deer--_ fine! But a _person?_ A living, breathing human being? Malcolm thought it was extremely sad --definitely wrong-- to kill something as special as a human being.

Then it occurred to him that maybe some people thought human beings weren’t special at all. Maybe some people thought they were just as disposable as a deer, or a dog.

Some people, like his dad.

Malcolm didn’t remember his father placing the knife in his hands. He was too stunned to speak, having trouble discerning if this was a dream, a nightmare, or reality. The answer soon became clear as he was boxed-in by his father’s arms, the boy’s back against his chest. Malcolm didn’t move, yet the knife settled over the woman’s ribs all the same as his father’s hands guided the blade to its proper place.

“Hold it here,” his father instructed, already maneuvering the child’s hands for him. Helplessly, Malcolm was forced to hold the tool, his body manipulated like a puppet.

The child’s breath caught in his throat. Meanwhile, he felt his father’s breath exhaling on the back of his neck; steady and warm, like the heat from a fire. It clouded in the cool, misty morning, causing the child’s skin to prickle at its touch.

The woman’s breath continued to wheeze, and another quiet _“Nnnnhnn”_ escaped her throat.

With their heads pressed beside each other’s, Martin murmured further instruction. “You need to go in between the fourth and fifth rib, then plunge down as deep as you can, into the heart.”

The knife moved with the slightest of adjustments, resting directly beneath the woman’s breast, honing in on her vital organs.

“Right… there.”

The blade settled, locked into place. Unable to look away, Malcolm stared down at the knife cusped in his small hands, which were cusped in his father’s. There was a heart beating beneath that knife --beneath that living, breathing, rising, and falling rib cage which the blade rested upon.

Then, Martin took his hands away.

“Go ahead, son.”

Holding the knife alone, Malcolm didn’t dare move a muscle-- yet every muscle inside of him was shaking. Every bone under his skin rattled. He couldn’t stop. He shivered like a leaf, but it wasn’t from the cold. His father’s surrounding body heat roasted him, causing him to sweat and become claustrophobic. He practically vibrated against the stone prison that framed him. The boy was shaking so much, he thought he might explode.

Finally speaking around the blockage of fright in his throat, Malcolm whispered, “...I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

Malcolm shut his eyes, squeezing them tight and trying to wake up --or go back to sleep-- anything that wasn’t this.

Then...

* * *

“What are you saying?” Malcolm whispered.

They were so immersed in each other’s boundless eyes, neither one dared to blink.

“I’m saying,” The Surgeon eased, “I _didn’t_ kill The Girl in the Box.”

His next words stole the profiler’s breath away.

 _“You_ did.”

* * *

The sword plunged into her body.

The boy’s eyes were still closed. At that moment, he didn’t see it, but he heard it and he felt it.

The monster within himself.

Malcolm felt his blade grinding against her bone. He felt the soft organs it penetrated. He felt the wet, squishy shifting of muscle as he bore that knife down as deep as he could, just like his father had told him. He sheathed it completely into her thoracic cavity, all the way to the hilt, where his fingers were tightly clenched, and still trembling.

When he opened his eyes, he saw his hands gripping the knife --all by themselves-- and saw the crimson fluid that welled up around the handle, trickling down her side.

The girl gave one last deflating wheeze.

* * *

Malcolm trembled.

“No. No,” he repeated, numb. His hands slowly fell from the collar of his father’s white prison uniform. “That’s not true. That’s not true.”

“I told you you wouldn’t like it, son.”

Malcolm stumbled backwards and stared into an invisible abyss, his mind churning heavily. This entire time, he’d been haunted by memories of The Girl not because he failed to find her, but because he’d been the one to kill her.

“I didn’t do that,” he denied, shaking his head as he felt a wave of nausea overcome him. His hands were clammy and hot, yet they shivered violently at his sides. “I-- I would never do that.”

“You did.”

“No,” Malcolm gasped. “No, I didn’t! I’m not like you!”

Martin laughed, stepping away from the bookshelf. “Oh, but you are. You’re more like me than you’re brave enough to admit, Malcolm.”

The Surgeon stalked forward, slowly driving the profiler back.

“Next time you rush off to one of your crime scenes, and you get all _excited_ over examining a dead body, and you pick up all the little clues... when you get that sparkle in your eye and when you tilt your head to admire the terrible _beauty_ of their demise… remember that _I_ was the one who piqued your interest in such things,” The Surgeon condemned.

Malcolm flinched when his back met the wall. He realized the red line of safety was on the _other_ side of the room, beyond his father. In his distracted state, the profiler had been cornered.

“But you can go ahead and keep _lying_ to yourself, son. Telling yourself that you are _nothing_ like your old man.”

Malcolm tried to keep his mind clear. He tried to ignore the horrors that played in his movie theater mind, always rolling on the screen behind his eyes. Instead, he worked quickly to plug the newly-obtained pieces of the puzzle into his memory, still riddled with holes. In struggling to find where those new pieces fit, he realized…

There was still more to the story.

“Did I kill her _before_ , or _after_ John tried to kill me?” the consultant asked.

Dr. Whitly hesitated, thinking briefly. “Before,” he answered. He went on to explain, “After John tried to kill you, we went home. We left him there to bleed out.”

“But he didn’t bleed out,” Malcolm murmured, the cogs in his head whirling. “He’s still alive.”

“Unfortunately,” Dr. Whitly grumbled.

“So if I go to Rikers and ask John about what happened that day…” Malcolm began.

Martin’s expression shifted, ever so slightly, to reveal a glimpse of something _uncertain._

“Will he corroborate your story?” Malcolm finished, watching his father carefully.

Martin thought about that, also carefully, and then sighed. “Probably not,” he yielded, then mumbled, “He’d probably put all sorts of _other_ garbage in your brain.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, son, I can’t read his mind.”

Boldly, the profiler moved past him to leave.

It took every ounce of self-control Martin had not to lash out and snatch his arm.

But he did stop the boy in another way.

“Malcolm.”

The profiler turned around, but only after having crossed over the red line into the realm of safety.

The Surgeon glanced over his shoulder, advising, “You can’t run from what you did.”

“I’m not running,” Malcolm promised.

“Then what is the point of going to John?” Martin asked, facing him. “He’s just going to lie to you.”

Malcolm waited a moment before responding to him. “If I really killed that girl, then why would John want to hide that from me?” he reasoned.

On the contrary, Watkins would desire nothing more than to rub it in the consultant’s face --to mock and ridicule him for his sin. To rub salt in his wound. Malcolm was prepared to face all of that, and more. He would endure anything to confirm the truth, even if it was a truth that would destroy him.

Then, another point occurred to the profiler. He tilted his head and furrowed his brow at his father. “In fact, why would _you_ want to hide that from me?”

Martin stood emotionless.

“This entire time, you let me wonder,” Malcolm reflected. “You let me forget.”

It would have been more characteristic of the serial killer to boast about his son’s accomplishment, and he would have boasted about it long, long ago.

“Because I wanted to protect you,” Martin attested. “I knew it would _hurt_ you, if you remembered the truth.”

Malcolm glanced down at the rift painted between them, then turned and left without another word.

He didn’t _know_ if what his father told him was the truth.

Maybe he just didn’t _want_ it to be.

Dr. Whitly watched him leave, his eyes trained to the profiler’s back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Hello! I hope you enjoyed Part 1! Part two is quickly on the way, and already mostly written. I just couldn't finish all of it before the deadline, so you get all of Part 1 now, and then all of Part 2 in a few days! Hooray for cliff-hangers!)


	16. PART 2 - The Corroboration

“I remember what happened," the stern-faced young man announced, elaborating, "On that camping trip.” The tone of his voice proved he was not happy about it.

John Watkins sat on the other side of a steel table, his cuffed hands chained to its surface. The metallic desk reflected the bright orange color of The Junkyard Killer’s jumpsuit, almost like a distorted mirror.

John chuckled. “You do?”

Malcolm solemnly, hatefully, nodded.

John Watkins leaned forward in his chair, laced his fingers together, and canted his head, curious to hear what the profiler believed he remembered. “Soooo? What happened?” 

“You pointed your shotgun at me when you showed me your room.”

“Sure did,” John grinned, laughing as he reminisced, “the look on your face...”

“When I cut my hand, you wrapped it in the kitchen.”

“Yup.”

Malcolm glared at him intensely. “And then you locked me upstairs that night. Is that true?”

_ “Wow,” _ John’s untrimmed mustache stretched as he smirked. “You remembered a _ lot.” _

Bitterly, Malcolm admitted, “I had some help."

“Oh yeah?”

“I had quite an extensive conversation with my father this morning,” the profiler informed him.

John snickered, rolling his weight on his elbows. “I’m not sure I would call that _ ‘help.’” _

“Why not?”

“Cuz your dad’s a _ liar,” _ John drawled, gazing at the boy with a devious twinkle in his eyes. “What did he tell you?”

Malcolm summarized everything his father had recounted about that camping trip, from loading up the car, unpacking at the cabin, the dinner, all the way to stumbling across the girl in the woods. “I found a jacket, and then a shoe. When I ran over the next ridge, I saw her in the mud.”

John scoffed, trying to hold back a grin. He failed, commencing to chuckle.

Malcolm stopped retelling the story and gave him a questioning look.

“Your dad  _ lied _ to you, kid.”

Malcolm tried to ignore a flash of hope that welled up in his chest. He kept his voice even and emotionless as he asked, “What did he lie to me about?”

“Well, for  _ one, _ the dinner.”

“The dinner?” Malcolm repeated, furrowing his brow. That was not what he'd expected to hear.

“Yeah, that  _ whole _ conversation while he was makin’ dinner,” John shook his head. “He left out a  _ big _ chunk of it.”

“What did he leave out?” Malcolm yearned to know.

John told him.

* * *

Martin was cooking venison on the stove top.

John sat at the counter, his eyes trained to The Surgeon’s back.

“Are you gonna do it?”

“Of course.”

“When?” John glanced to the staircase. “Now?” It was a good time, he thought.  _ Anytime  _ was a good time, and ‘sooner’ was a much better time than ‘later.’

_ “No…” _ Martin drawled, as if speaking to a child who needed to be reminded over and over and over again to have patience. “I’ll do it when I  _ feel _ like it.”

John hated that answer.

The kid was silent upstairs. Asleep, no doubt. Not much to do up in that room for hours except sleep. John would know. Though Malcolm was silent and contained, the brat’s presence still nagged at him. It made his skin crawl and itch. Or maybe that was just his nicotine dependency. He rubbed his hands over his face and sighed.

“Relax, John.”

“I  _ can’t _ fuckin’ relax, man,” John snapped, pressing his fingers into his eyes. “I’m not gonna relax until you just  _ do it.” _

“Well, don’t hold your breath.”

John took his hands away from his face. “What?”

“As I said, I’ll do it when I feel like it, and so far…” Martin trailed off, then shrugged as he continued stirring the contents of the skillet. “I don’t really feel like it.”

John felt a wave of heat rise up from his chest. It pressed against his skull like steam building beneath a mountain peak, ready to blow.  _ “Fuck, _ man!” he hissed. “Are you  _ shitting  _ me?”

Martin continued fussing over the skillet, apparently deaf to him. That only enraged John further.

“You’re backing out!” Watkins accused.

“I’m not backing out,” Whitly muttered.

“Yes, you  _ are! _ You’re backing out!” John stood up from his stool, almost angry enough to march over to the man. “You’re a fucking  _ coward,  _ just like your kid!”

Martin slowly turned his head over his shoulder and solemnly advised, “Be  _ careful, _ John.” The expression on his face was dark, cruel, and somehow  _ empty. _ Devoid of humanity. It was an expression that said, _ ‘don’t piss me off.’ _

The hollow look lasted all of two seconds. Then it was back to cooking. Back to normalcy. To humanity.

John settled back into his seat and placed his elbows on the counter again. He wrung his hands, massaging his haired knuckles before pressing them to his forehead. A storm churned inside him, but he kept it bottled up. For his own sake.

After a few moments of letting John stew to himself, Martin spoke up again. His voice was somehow both calming and cautionary. “I told you, I will do what I have to do to ensure our work continues.”

“You have to kill him,” John whispered. His voice grew with his agitation as he reminded, “You  _ said _ you would  _ kill _ him.”

“And I will,” Martin assured, scraping at the frying pan.  _ “If _ it comes to that,” he murmured. He took the pan off the burner and turned around to bring it to the counter, where he'd laid out a trio of plates.

John watched him scrape the seared venison and diced potatoes onto each plate. He grimaced as Martin concluded, “But it’s not going to come to that.”

* * *

“You already told me that,” Malcolm said.

“Told you what?”

“You already told me that Dr. Whitly brought me on that camping trip to kill me,” Malcolm reminded him.

“It’s true,” John claimed.

“Dr. Whitly says it’s not,” Malcolm countered. His father had vehemently denied such allegations. The consultant had never seen him so offended.

“‘Round and ‘round we go,” John sighed. “I told you, kid, your dad’s a liar.”

“All I have is your word against his,” Malcolm calmly stated.

“That’s not true.” John lifted a pointed finger as best he could with the handcuffs keeping his wrists to the desk. “You’re forgetting about one key person.  _ Yourself. _ You were there that weekend. You know what happened.”

Malcolm hesitated, maintaining a poker face for as long as he could before reluctantly admitting, “I don’t remember everything.”

With a curious tone, John asked, “What’s your intuition tellin’ ya?”

Malcolm thought about that, glancing down at the gleaming silver of the man’s handcuffs. Finally, he answered, “My intuition tells me to listen to  _ you.” _

John was surprised to hear that.  _ “Me?” _

Malcolm nodded. “I think you’re going to tell me the truth.” The profiler didn’t actually believe that, of course. He was simply baiting The Surgeon’s rival. “I don’t think you’re going to  _ lie _ to me, like my father lied to me.”

The Junkyard Killer took the bait.

Watkins grinned. “Ironic, isn’t it?” He rolled his weight on his elbows again as his excitement grew. His suppressed enthusiasm slowly rose like a patient tide that crept up the edges of a jagged cliff.

“Yeah, I’ll tell you the truth, kiddo,” he bargained eagerly. “I’ll tell ya all the things Martin doesn’t  _ want _ you to remember.”

* * *

“You said he saw The Girl,” John growled.

“He only  _ thinks  _ he saw her,” Martin corrected. He drizzled the last of the seasoned juices onto each plated steak, then carried the empty skillet to the sink. “It was just a bad dream.”

John seized with disbelief. “Seriously?  _ Seriously, _ Martin? You think that’s gonna work?”

“Why wouldn’t it?” Martin wondered. The faucet  _ creaked _ as the water was turned on.

“He’s going to remember!” John exclaimed.

“No, he won’t,” Martin argued, certain that such a thing was impossible.

“Yes, he will!” John rubbed his face again, harder this time. “The kid’s  _ smart, _ man. He fuckin’... he’s got eyes like a hawk. I feel like I’m in an interrogation room when I’m with him.”

Martin chuckled. “He does have a knack for asking a lot of deep questions.”

John was repulsed by the genuine fondness in Martin's voice. With a flare of spite, John demanded, “What happens one day when he asks, ‘Dad? Are you a serial killer?’”

As he washed the skillet and the turning fork, Martin tossed another glare over his shoulder.

John’s mocking voice continued. “‘Dad, do you kill people for shits and giggles? Do you have  _ fun  _ doing it, Dad? Are you a  _ psycho?’” _

“My son,” Martin growled, choking the faucet with a sharp twist of his hand, “would  _ never  _ say, ‘shits and giggles.’”

As The Surgeon dried his hands on a towel, John hunted for an answer. “What are you gonna do, Martin? What are you gonna do when he asks you those things? What are you gonna do when he asks you ‘ _ why?’” _

“He’s not going to ask me those things,” Martin muttered stubbornly.

“Yes he will,” John promised, tapping his own temple. “When he starts rememberin’.”

Martin balled the towel in his hands and gripped it tightly. “I said, he  _ won’t _ remember.”

Despite the warning tone in his friend’s voice, John did not back off. Instead, he leaned forward in his stool and jeered, “Are you just gonna pump him full of drugs every two weeks? Chloroform his pillow every night? You think that’ll solve it? Good ol’ chemical bath to the brain?”

_ “Shut up,” _ Martin hissed with a flash of his fangs.

“You do that too much, an’ you’re gonna make him dumb.”

“I  _ know _ that, John, I’m not an idiot!” Martin snapped. He threw the towel onto the surface of the counter and then spread his hands on it and leaned forward to growl in the other man’s face.  _ “I’m _ the one who graduated medical school, remember?”

Evidently, Dr. Whitly got a PhD in stupidity. John did not lean away from him, nor cast his gaze downward. He remained boiling with vexation as he held The Surgeon’s glare. “Martin,” he warned,  _ “ _ You’re not. Being. _ Careful.” _

Martin pierced one last scalding glare at him and then left the counter, grumbling, “I’m being plenty careful.” He yanked open a drawer to remove a handful of dining silverware, slamming the door shut when he was done. “ _ You’re _ being paranoid,” he accused hotly.

That set John off. He raised his voice to yell, “He’s gonna call the fuckin’ cops, man! He’s gonna  _ ruin _ us!”

Martin whirled around to yell back a heated,  _ “No _ , he  _ won’t!!" _

A sharp  _ creak _ sounded above them, punctuating Martin’s snarl. The two men whirled to look at the base of stairs, but there was no one there. Silence proceeded to hang over the kitchen, and they both waited, straining to hear anything else. 

Martin felt his heart gallop in his chest as he turned to John and mouthed,  _ ‘I thought you locked the door.’ _

“I did,” John answered. He made no effort to hush his voice.  _ His _ heart was not racing. He couldn’t care less if the brat overheard their conversation.

Martin, however...

After a moment of hesitation, The Surgeon crept toward the staircase, each step carefully placed. He stared up into the shadows of the ascending steps almost as if he was afraid of what might be hidden in the darkness.

As he drew closer, he softly called, “Malcolm?” Kindness thickly masked his voice.

No one answered him, and the steps did not creak again. He drew closer, craning his head to look around the L-shaped structure to peer into the blackness above them.

His son was not there. The hall upstairs was empty, and quiet. The creak had been nothing. Maybe it hadn’t even occurred at all, and Martin had only imagined it.

The man ran a hand through his rich brown hair and felt a wave of relief pass through him as he exhaled. After casting a superfluous glance at the basement door, Martin returned to the kitchen and continued his conversation with John by murmuring quietly, “He just needs to process things. He needs to realize that he’s  _ fine,  _ and that it’s  _ not  _ a scary thing.”

“That  _ what’s _ not a scary thing? His dad being a  _ serial killer?” _

Martin ignored him, easing, “Once he processes those things… then he’ll understand.” He busied himself at the sink again, ensuring that the skillet and everything else he’d used to prepare dinner was properly scrubbed and thoroughly clean.

John shook his head, rolled his eyes, and then rubbed at them again. “Look, man. If you didn’t bring him to kill him, then why the hell did you bring him on this trip at all?”

The brat was nothing but trouble. John had not planned on  _ babysitting _ all weekend while Martin played around with his bitch in the basement.

Martin glanced back to the stairs, then focused on the dishes. Quietly, he answered, “To teach him.”

_ “Teach _ him? Teach him  _ what?” _

“Teach him... about what we do,’ Martin answered, gesturing with the soapy brush.

John blinked, stunned. “Are you  _ shitting _ me? You’re gonna teach him how to  _ kill _ people?”

“Not all at once, of course. Baby steps. But, eventually, yes, he will… he will be  _ gifted  _ at it. Like I am.”

John threw his hands in the air before dropping them on the counter top. “He’s fucking  _ ten, _ Martin!”

“He’s a fast learner,” Dr. Whitly advocated, silencing the sink once more and then wiping his hands on the towel he’d crumpled earlier.

'“He couldn’t even shoot a goddamn deer!”

“He wasn’t ready for that, yet,” Martin explained, his eyes searching a vacant space in front of him. “But this time will be different. I know what he likes. He likes…  _ mystery. _ He likes...  _ learning, _ and  _ solving  _ things. So, I’m going to... give him a little…  _ activity.” _

“An activity?”

Martin returned to the plates of food to distribute the silverware evenly between them. “Yes. A scavenger hunt, of sorts. I’m gonna leave a trail in the woods. He’ll stumble across it when we go hiking. He’ll have a litany of questions, and together, we’ll find the answers.”

“You’re gonna have him stumble across a fucking murder scene? You think he’s gonna like that?” John scoffed, appalled at the moronic plan.

“Of course!” Martin whined. “He loves that stuff. He reads detective books all the time.”

John abandoned his bar stool to confront the maniac, threatening with a pointed finger, “This isn’t a fuckin’ _book,_ Martin. This isn’t a _game._ This is our work. This is _my_ _mission!”_

Martin met his hostile approach without fear. There may have been daggers in John’s eyes, but there were artillery cannons in Martin’s. “And this is _my_ _son,”_ he growled. Nodding to the side, he ordered, “You let me worry about all this. I’ll let you know when I need your help.”

“I’m not helping you with this,” John vowed.

Martin returned his attention to the plates, muttering stubbornly, “Yes, you are. That’s why I brought  _ you _ here.” Belittlement soaked his tone, as if all that John was good for was being a mindless henchman.

“It’s  _ my _ fuckin’ cabin!” John shouted.

One plate  _ clinked _ as it was lightly slammed onto the counter top, causing John to flinch at the sound.  _ “And it’s my--!” _ Martin realized he’d raised his voice too high. He briefly glanced to the stairs and then quieted himself, hissing, “Victim.”

The Surgeon summarized with a low-churning snarl, “My victim. My son. My project.”

John grit his teeth and held back his rage, only allowing a simmering, “Your shovel. Your grave. Your mistake,” to leave his lips.

Martin did not heed his prophetic warning. He only responded with a curt, _ “Get out.” _

“Don’t come back until you’re ready to act like a decent person,” Martin sentenced.

With a mocking bow, John retreated. “We can’t all be as talented as you.”

The back door slammed with the force of a thunderclap as John left the house. Alone in the kitchen, Martin closed his eyes and sighed, resetting himself. One deep, long cycle of air through his lungs did the trick. When he opened his eyes again, he was a new man.

After the table had been set, he went upstairs and unlocked the door to wake his sleeping son for dinner.


	17. The Realization

“My dad unlocked the door?”

“I assume so,” John shrugged in his orange jumpsuit. “I sure didn’t. I was outside.”

Malcolm scanned the vacant surface of the metal table between them, trying to verify John’s recount with his own memories --which were still clouded and sparse.

“He told you the door was never locked, didn’t he?” John guessed with a smirk playing at his greying beard.

Malcolm didn’t answer him.

“You can’t believe anything he says, kid,” Watkins told him. “He’s been lying to you --and himself-- this entire time.”

“And himself?” Malcolm repeated, lifting his eyes.

“Oh, yeah,” John snickered with a nod. “Especially himself.”

Malcolm stared at him, listening intently.

“That guy’s so fucked-up, even when he _thinks_ he’s telling the truth, he’s really not,” the prisoner explained. “Most times, he doesn’t even know he’s making shit up.”

Malcolm was troubled by that. It sounded hauntingly familiar. That was how he felt about his own recollection, sometimes. The profiler, too, had difficulty discerning what was real and what was an illusion, when it came to his memories and dreams.

Taking a breath, he mentioned, “Dr. Whitly said that his ‘scavenger hunt’ happened before you tried to kill me. Is that true?”

Before Malcolm even finished asking the question, John’s expression distorted. Then The Junkyard Killer burst into laughter. “You never went on that stupid scavenger hunt.”

Hope fluttered in Malcolm’s chest again, but he tried to suppress it and focus on the conversation. “I didn’t?”

“No,” John chuckled. The crow’s feet at the corner of his eyes danced with the bounce of his smile.

“Why not?”

“‘Cause your dad’s crackbrained plan fell apart!” John exclaimed with a cackle in his throat. “You can thank _me_ for that!”

* * *

Smoking usually helped to calm John’s spasmodic nerves and soothe his volatile temper, but the paper rolls of rat poison worked no such miracles tonight. He paced along the back porch, his steps uneven and wandering as his boots clunked against the wood. He’d sucked away the entire cig in under five minutes, then tossed the butt out into the grass. Rubbing his face, he continued pacing and tried not to dwell on the thought of smoking another cig. The pack in his pocket was empty, and his extras were upstairs in his room. He didn’t want to go back inside. He wasn’t ready to ‘act like a decent person,’ yet. Was he ever?

As his agitation grew, his thoughts instead turned to liquor, and he recalled where his pop’s stash still resided. Above the fridge. Taking a large breath and gathering up the courage to return indoors, he opened the door and bee-lined it for the cabinet with the booze. Martin and his kid were at the table, but John ignored them as he focused on popping open a bottle of strong gin.

He answered whatever Martin asked or said to him with generic grunts of, “Uh huh,” and “Yup,” not really paying any attention to the story The Surgeon was prattling on about. The little brat wasn’t too interested in holding a conversation either, and so Martin continued having a one-way discussion with himself. He was good at it. He did it all the time, even when he didn’t realize he was doing it.

John didn’t eat. He only drank. For the duration of the meal, he slouched in his seat and glowered at nothing between stealing hateful glances at the boy and taking long swigs directly from his bottle. Anxiety tickled his skin like spiders crawling up his neck. The child picked at his food, deaf to his father’s theatrical stories, though Martin didn’t seem to notice. Nearly every single one of them was packed full of bullshit, and it took everything John had not to cringe at the embellishments his old friend laced throughout the fibs.

The subsequent hour was torturous for The Junkyard Killer. All he could think about was that the kid should have been dead by now. But clearly, Martin wasn’t going to kill him, like he’d promised. That broken promise lay strewn in pieces before Watkins, and all he could do was stare at them in misery as his mind swam with thoughts of bitterness, each one submerged in an alcohol stew.

“A great big Jersey trout, almost this big!” Martin spread his arms. “She was beautiful. Soft scales, pretty spots, and she had a nice pink line, running all the way down each side. That was a fun time, wasn”t it, John?”

“Yeah, it was,” John muttered. “Until you let her get away.”

Martin carefully glanced at the other man, wondering, “Are you talking about the fish, or...?”

“Yeah.” John met his eyes with an acidic look. “The _‘fish.’”_

Martin ignored that look and equipped a smile. “Fish _are_ rather slippery,” he chuckled; a joke meant for the kid.

John rolled his gin bottle around on its base, watching the last bit of liquid swish around the bottom of it. “You let everything get away.”

He knew Martin couldn’t ignore that.

“No, I _don’t,”_ Martin scoffed, still grinning. He tipped his head and lightly jabbed back, “In fact, I remember _you_ forgetting to lock up the trailer on more than one occasion.”

“You almost let the _other_ bitch get away, too” John accused absent-mindedly.

Martin’s smile faded. “Excuse me?”

“The… y’ know,” John lifted an eyebrow at him. _“‘Deer.’”_

Martin glared at him. “I did _not_ let the _deer_ get away.”

The kid spoke up with a hoarse, unused voice, clearly confused as to what they were talking about. “H-how did she get away?”

“Never mind, son. It’s a long story.”

John was all too happy to explain in a drunken slur, “The bitch slipped outta her ropes.”

“You mean the _deer,”_ Martin corrected with a slight growl.

“Yeah. The _‘deer,’”_ John sneered in mockery, staring intently at his gin bottle before bringing it to his lips.

Little Malcolm’s expression was fogged with confusion. “The deer slipped out of…?”

Martin stood up to smoothly snatch the bottle out of the other man’s grasp before he could partake from it again. “I think you’ve had more than enough to drink tonight, John,” he grumbled, warning, “You’re getting _sloppy_ with your speech.”

With a tired glare, John heeded his warning, and shut up.

Tucking the bottle under his arm, Martin picked up his own empty plate, then reached for Malcolm’s, gently asking, “Are you finished with your dinner?”

“Yeah,” the boy mumbled despondently.

Martin departed from the table with the dishes, leaving his other two dinner guests to sit in a depressed silence. Once Martin’s back was turned, John lifted his gaze to drill a look of spite into it. Then, he focused on the boy, whose eyes were glazed over as he stared into an unfathomable distance.

The kitchen faucet _creaked_ as water rushed from it. Under the sound of its hissing current, John took his opportunity.

“You been having bad dreams lately?” he murmured quietly to the boy.

Malcolm hesitantly glanced his way. His orbs were wide and full, as if he’d forever forgotten how to blink. A deer in the headlights.

“You don’t remember them, do you?” John smirked knowingly.

The child did not answer him. Nervously, he pulled his eyes away to stare off into the distance again. His focus happened to land on the basement door, far across the room. John followed his gaze, then tipped a finger to point at the door.

“You go down there, and I promise you. You’ll remember.”

The boy continued staring at the door. For a moment, John worried the brat hadn’t heard his promise. He waited, watching the little Whitly for any sign of life.

_Earth to Malcolm. Earth to Malcolm, come in._

Finally, the boy blinked, and some of the glaze over his eyes was wiped away. The child looked up at him again, a curious glare on his face. In that same hoarse, scared voice, Malcolm whispered, “Why? What’s down there?”

John smiled. “You should ask your dad,” he whispered back.

Malcolm glanced at the man washing dishes at the sink. The man that was hiding something from him.

After some deliberation, the boy ventured to raise his voice, calling, “Dad?”

“Yes, son?”

Malcolm hesitated again. “...What’s in the basement?”

The dish-washing stopped.

Martin glanced over his shoulder, a smile blossoming across his face as he answered, “Nothing.” His eyes darted to John before returning to Malcolm, asking sweetly, “Why do you ask?”

Malcolm knew he’d been lied to, because, as he reminded his father, “You said there was…”

“A leak,” Martin finished, jumping to amend his previous answer. “Yes, a gas leak, that’s all,” he murmured pleasantly, focusing on the dishes again.

John's weasel-like whiskers shivered as he snickered to himself. “A fuckin’ _leak.”_

Malcolm was unnerved by the cabin keeper’s laughter. “That’s all?” he echoed his father, hopeful for the truth.

The kitchen faucet _creaked_ as it was silenced. Martin wiped his hands on a rag and faced his son again. “Yes, that’s all,” he confirmed with a warm smile, giving the boy nothing whatsoever to be suspicious about.

But Malcolm was suspicious anyway. He turned to look at the basement door again, now placed under a childish spell of insatiable curiosity. The kind that killed cats. Martin’s smile fizzled as he recognized this, knowing the boy would stop at nothing to learn everything he could about that basement --now that _someone_ had piqued his interest in it.

The Surgeon gave John another brief glare, but all John did was grin triumphantly. “Why don’t you go get ready for bed, son?” Martin suggested with a chipper tone. “I’ll be up shortly. Say ‘goodnight’ to John.”

“Goodnight,” Malcolm mumbled, slowly sliding out of his seat. His milky eyes were glued to that door, and as he approached it on his way to the stairs, his steps stilled. He stared at it as if he expected a monster to burst through it and gobble him up at any second.

John cruelly fantasized about making a sudden loud noise to jump scare the brat.

“Say ‘goodnight,’ John,” Martin ordered kindly.

“G’night Johhhhhn,” John drawled drunkenly.

Malcolm continued up the stairs, tearing his concentration off that ominous door.

Snickering, John ‘stopped playing around’ and called after the brat, “Goodnight, kid. Sweet dreams!”

As the child disappeared around the corner of the staircase and his footsteps faded into the bathroom overhead, Martin’s smile inverted, and he turned to give John a murderous look.


	18. The Fight

“Do you remember the fight?” John grinned, slowly rubbing his cuffed hands together. “Between your dad and I?"

Malcolm didn’t answer him, piecing together his blurred memories. From them, he deducted, “I wasn’t there to see it.”

“Of course not. Martin wouldn’t have let you see it,” John mused. “But you heard it.”

Malcolm nodded, remembering.

He’d felt it, too.

* * *

“Did you tell Malcolm there was something in the basement?” Martin hissed under his breath.

“No,” John muttered, standing from his seat and meandering over to the counter, where Martin had placed the gin bottle. “He figured it out for himself, just like I told you he would.” He downed the last bit of alcohol, knowing he’d need every drop of it for the conversation that was about to unfold. “He’s not retarded _yet,_ though one more syringe would do it.”

“Shut your mouth!” Martin snarled, stepping over to the drunk like he was about to shut it for him. 

Watkins only sneered at him with a cruel grin. “That’s why yer so fuckin’ scared, isn’t it? You can’t stick him again, or he’s done for.”

Martin could deny it all he wanted, but John knew the truth. Beneath all that thick brown fur and those needle-sharp fangs and those great big roaring threats, Whitly was just a coward. Just like his precious little bear cub.

“I know what you’re trying to do,” Martin warned, pointing a finger in the man’s face. “You’re trying to _sabotage_ me.”

“I’m trying to _save_ you,” John drawled tiredly, wishing there was more gin in the bottle.

“You’re getting in his head, planting seeds--”

“That’s your forte,” John mumbled.

“-- to poison his perception of me,” Martin growled, ignoring his interruptions. “You’re trying to make it so that I _have_ to kill him, but it’s not going to work.”

John raised his voice to snarl, “He is a _threat_ to our _work.”_

“He is the _future_ of our work!” Martin yelled. “One day it'll be the _three of us!”_

John shook his head, and his voice grew quiet. He mumbled in a hopeless, miserable state of disbelief, “I can't believe you would put all this in jeopardy. After all we’ve done. After everything we’ve been through, everything it took for us to get here, when we _finally_ got a system down, a _perfect_ system, you’re going to ruin it with your goddamn kid.”

Martin moved in closer, turning his pointed finger to his own chest. _“My_ ‘goddamn kid,’ is going to carry on our legacy, after we’re dead.” He spoke slowly, trying very, very hard to get a very, very simple concept through his partner’s very, very thick skull.

“Yer fuckin’ delusional,” John breathed. It was almost funny. He couldn’t help but smile as he corrected Martin’s words in the same slow pace, “He is going to go to the _cops,_ Martin. Maybe not now. Maybe not this weekend. But eventually, he _will_ turn on you.”

Martin took a deep breath to refuel his patience. His tank was running on empty. “The only one turning on me, right now, is you. I warned you about that, John. Have you forgotten?”

The drunk ignored his threat and implored, “Just rip it off, Martin!” His exasperation grew as he gestured in the air with the empty gin bottle. “Rip off the fucking band-aid and _kill him already!”_

Whitly grit his teeth and spoke through them. “I’m not. Going to kill. My son.”

 _“You have to!”_ John wailed.

His partner barked, “That’s _ten_ years of work down the drain!”

“If you _don’t_ kill him, then it’ll be _seventeen_ years of work down the drain!”

“I have _invested_ in him. I have _built_ him, piece by piece,” Martin seethed. He threw an arm to gesture at the stairs, crying, “I taught him everything he knows!”

“No, nonono,” John slurred, shaking his head. He brought the bottle and his free hand to his chest and shook them. “That’s _me!_ You’ve built _ME!”_

“I’ve _tolerated_ you,” Martin snapped, disgusted. His words bore down into The Junkyard Killer’s heart like tent stakes sinking into the soggy earth. “I _never_ wanted you, and neither did anyone else. You are _garbage._ You are _waste_. I got _stuck_ with cleaning up after your _filth,_ just like your grandparents did!” Vengeance poured from The Surgeon’s throat, charring the air with a heated malice. “I _had_ to teach you. I _had_ to invest in you, because I had _no other choice!_ And Christ, don’t get me started on your _stupid_ ‘mission!’”

“Shut up,” John’s voice quivered, hatred masking his pain. He knew his mentor was just trying to provoke him, and he tried not to fall for it. He tried to be stronger than his base emotions and insecurities.

“You think you’re some kind of righteous _saint?_ You think God’s gonna grant you _redemption_ because you murder whores? You think he doesn’t see you when you turn around and fuck ‘em when they’re dead?”

“Shut up!” Watkins roared, at his rope’s end.

“Your pop was right about you, Johnny. You will _never_ amount to anything more than a tattered old _punching bag.”_

Triggered like dynamite, John gripped the neck of his gin bottle and lashed out with it. Martin knocked his arm away and delivered his own tight-fisted strike, commencing a fight too viscous to ever be found in a bar.

They clashed like titans, and the house shook with every blow.

* * *

Their muffled yelling made Malcolm's skin prickle with uncertainty. He was the source of their bickering -- that much, he could tell. The boy knelt in front of his open knapsack in John’s childhood bedroom, his pajamas still folded inside. He didn’t dare pull them out. He didn’t dare move. He only listened, barely able to discern his father’s voice from John’s. Both voices raged with an anger that was monstrous in nature, unlike anything he’d ever heard --especially from his father.

The boy flinched at the first _slam._ The walls trembled around him, and he didn’t know if it was because the house was so old and weak, or if it was because it had been hit with such power that even a stone wall would shudder at the impact. As the sounds continued, his hands began to tremble, too. Another _slam,_ then a clatter and a crash. Malcolm flattened his shaking hands to his head and curled up underneath the blackened window. The yelling, though more muffled, was still audible, accentuating every bump and bellow. The quaking of the building resonated down his spine as he pressed it against the wall.

Malcolm’s intuition, stronger now than ever before, told him to _stay in that room,_ to condense himself in a ball and hide, to be quiet, to wait out the hurricane that raged below, until the darkness receded and the dawn returned.

Their fight shook the house. It creaked on its old wooden bones, and Malcolm was too frozen with a paralyzing terror to uncover his ears or find a better place to take shelter from the turbulent storm. Fear filled his veins. He felt like he was trapped in a nightmare.

 _Don't destroy the cabin,_ he begged.

_Don't burn the castle._

For a brief moment, he prayed for his dad to emerge the victor. But then, what if his father did the unthinkable and turned his anger onto him next? The man had never been angry with him before, and Malcolm didn’t think he could endure it if his father yelled at him the way he’d yelled at John. But if John won, that would be a hundred times worse. If that were the outcome, there was no doubt in the child’s mind that the cabin keeper would grab his shotgun and shoot them both.

Malcolm just wanted both of them to disappear. He wanted silence, stillness, _sunlight._ He wanted peace. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to wake up, or go back to sleep --anything that wasn’t this.

* * *

The gin bottle lay scattered throughout the kitchen in broken pieces, some shards glinting in the artificial light. The bar stools clattered to the floor as John fell through them, his arm sliding across the island counter. He failed to find any grip to haul himself upright, and as he landed on his ass, he was scolded by a brutal _“Get up!”_ from his assaulter. _“Get up, you moron!!”_

But he couldn’t get up. Martin wouldn’t let him.

As Watkins raised himself on one knee, a bar stool was snatched up from the ground and then slammed against him, flipping him to lie on his other side. He tucked his knees and protected his stomach from the stool’s legs as they were jabbed into him, bruising his shins instead of bursting his gut. Watkins grabbed at the wooden rungs of the stool and yanked on them to pull Martin down onto the carpet with him.

They wrestled like schoolboys, their limbs flying with wild punches and clawed swipes between seizing each other in forceful grapples. One final roll --paired with a timed shove-- sent the back of John’s skull cracking against the corner of the couch behind him. The man cried out as a numbed pain jarred through him.

Martin broke free with a gasp, scrambling to his feet while using a nearby dining chair for aid. Then the old oak chair was removed from the dining table, lifted, and brought down on top of John’s body with enough force to break it into pieces. Too sluggish to block it, The Junkyard Killer cried out again as he suffered the substantial blow. Wheezing to regain his breath, he crawled away --but not before grabbing a splintered chair leg as a weapon.

He was gonna stab it right into the fucker’s leg, but he lost track of Whitly, and coughed as Martin sent a kick into his side from behind. Another well-placed kick to the kidney, and John was practically retching into the decrepit old carpet.

“Come on, John,” Martin panted, circling him. “You can’t give up now.”

Watkins was too crippled with pain to hear the belittling encouragement of his bully.

“We’re just getting started.”

John convulsed as he suffered another swift kick, his stomach nothing more than a deflating soccer ball. The chair leg was ripped from his grasp and then used to hit him. He curled up on instinct and bore through the next slew of attacks, gritting his teeth as he felt all the familiar agonies blossom in all the familiar places.

By the time Watkins uttered a ragged mewl of _“Stop,”_ Martin was nearly exhausted from the workout.

Nearly, but not quite.

 _“Stop. Stop,”_ John repeated, struggling to breathe between each sputtered whisper.

Finally, Whitly stopped.

Martin tossed the broken chair leg aside, and caught his breath. He ran his hands through his hair to fashion his locks back behind his ears, out of his sweltering face. His hands trembled, his knuckles raw and red, but he didn’t notice. John was left to cough and grimace to himself as Martin prowled through the kitchen.

Slightly dizzy from the physical exertion, Whitly twisted the faucet on and filled himself a glass of water. After he drained it down his throat, he set the glass down on the counter top with a sharp _clink._ “We’re not done, yet,” he rasped.

He grabbed the skillet, causing a terrible rattle of metal and porcelain dishware to echo through the space. Soap water dripped across the yellow, laminated kitchen floor as he circled back to John with the cast iron pan in hand.

“You haven’t learned your lesson.”

The Surgeon descended upon him again in a flurry, putting all his strength into every swing, with high arcs of motion like he was hammering a stubborn spike in the transcontinental railroad. Martin used every inch of that tool to beat every inch of John’s body. He swung the flat bottom of the skillet like a tennis racket from hell, eliciting a hollow _thud_ to resonate from the man’s back and rib cage. He angled the object to smack the edges of the pan against the bones in John’s arms, shoulders, shins, knees --even his head, which the man tried to cover. He was spurred to hit him even harder with every cry and grunt the battered man made.

Watkins balled himself up tightly and endured the beating until he couldn't feel his limbs --until he didn’t know if they were even still locked into place around his skull and soft parts, or limp from the torment. Until he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t beg for mercy or even moan. Soon, he didn’t know which way was up or down, which direction the attacks were coming from, or even who was attacking him anymore.

_Stop. Stop._

It didn’t stop.

_I’m sorry, Poppa. I’m sorry._

Every blow caused a burst of color to bloom in the blackness of his vision. They lit up like fireworks, sporadic and unpredictable, in various sizes and strengths.

After he went numb all over, it wasn’t so bad. It was better than the wardrobe. So long as his pop was battering him to a pulp, he wasn’t locked in the wardrobe. Anything was better than the wardrobe.

_Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name._

_Have mercy on me, and hear my prayer._

He watched the colors dance behind his eyes and waited for it to be over, powerless to do anything else --or was he already unconscious at that point?

He didn’t remember.

_Deliver me from evil, O’ Lord._

_In thy holy name, Amen._

* * *

There was silence.

Silence, which dragged on through an imperceptible amount of time.

Malcolm didn’t dare take his hands away from his ears, and it was a good thing, too, because the next thing that broke through the air was the slam of a door. It shook the cabin so thoroughly, Malcolm was convinced it was about to come tumbling down like a house of playing cards.

The cabin did not crumble. It grew cold, and quiet, like something inside it had died.

Malcolm feared to peek above the edge of the window behind him to steal a glance outside. Which man had won? Which man had left? His heart thundered as he thought through the possibilities of his future.

All he wanted was to hear his father’s soft voice. He wanted to hear his gentle call of, ‘Malcolm,’ before he opened the door and told him everything was alright, and that they were going home now.

But that didn’t happen.

He began to panic as a lost loneliness settled under his skin. Did John leave? Did his _dad_ leave? _Without_ him?

He peeked out the window, his breath fogging on the cold glass. No one was outside. The truck and the station wagon were still parked on the grass, dormant and dim. The night sky was smothered by thick clouds, weakening and diffusing whatever moonlight the heavens might have tried to provide.

* * *

“That was a pretty nasty fight,” Malcolm commented, his expression vacant of emotion. He took everything John said with a grain of salt, knowing he couldn't trust _either_ psychopath’s recollection entirely.

Perhaps there was more to his callousness. Perhaps something deep inside the profiler still doubted that his father could ever be that cruel. Or perhaps something deep inside him was still too afraid to accept the truth.

“Yeah,” John purred distractedly, picking at his nails. “It was.”

The Junkyard Killer didn’t say anything after that. He only looked down at his hands. His eyes were glazed over and his eyelids sagged low like he was still exhausted from the beating he’d taken. Malcolm watched him, studying the killer’s rare emotion --which manifested in the absence of emotion. The absence of a smirk, the absence of a laugh. The absence of a bitter, vengeful twinkle in his eye.

“Then you tried to kill me,” Malcolm muttered, ready to continue the story.

“Yeah.” John brought his eyes up to the profiler, and a darkness filled them.

“Then I tried to kill you.”


	19. The Kill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This should really be two chapters, but I couldn't figure out a way to break it up and title one part something else. Oh well. Yay for extra long chapters!

The skillet clattered to the floor, newly greased with sweat and blood. The red haze dissipated, and all that was left in the room was a trail of destroyed furniture, a defeated heap of a man, and a very tired victor.

Martin caught his breath and blinked, stepping away from his senseless, pummeled opponent to survey the mess they’d made. His ragged panting steadily lengthened and deepened as he calmed. Martin wiped his wrist under his nose, noticing it was dripping. His hand came away red, and he cursed under his stolen breath. He couldn’t let Malcolm see him like this.

He glanced to the stairs, which were silent and dark. He didn’t hear anything rustle on the floor above, and was content to assume his son had somehow entered into a deep, peaceful sleep despite the racket they’d created. That, or the boy was simply lying in bed, staring off into the distance with that vacant zombified look, checked-out of reality yet again, like he had been during the car ride, like he had been all day long. Like he had been ever since…

But Martin didn't want to think about that.

The man moved to the basement door, and couldn’t resist slamming it shut behind him as another burst of unsatisfied anger seized control of him.

The Girl was still tied to the chair, paralyzed and stiff with her head cranked back, just as he’d left her hours ago. She’d be that way for another few hours to come. This was supposed to be his time to prepare her for tomorrow, but with Malcolm's suspicions rekindled, perhaps it would be unwise to utilize her for their lesson.

What if the boy recognized her from before?

_ 'He’s going to remember.’ _

Martin marched past The Girl as if she was as insignificant and inanimate as the tool carts and workbenches around her --which, at that point, she was. He shoved some gauze up his nose and then rinsed his bleeding knuckles with the hose attached to the wall. Lastly, he opened the freezer in the back corner of the room and wrapped some ice in a cloth. He pressed the bundle over his raw hand and took a seat at one of the workbenches. As the adrenaline wore off and the aches set in, he exhaled a long breath and debated injecting some drugs into his arm for the oncoming pain.

_ ‘What are you gonna do, Martin?’ _

If only  _ everything  _ could be solved with the plunge of a syringe.

_ ‘What happens one day when he asks, ‘Dad? Are you a serial killer?’ _

The man closed his eyes and rubbed a hand over his face, feeling the bruises starting to take shape under his skin.

_ ‘What are you gonna do when he asks you  _ ‘why?’

_ ‘He’s not going to ask me those things.’ _

_ ‘Yes he will. When he starts rememberin’.’ _

Malcolm wasn’t going to remember. Martin would make sure of it.

He could disfigure The Girl’s face, he thought, so she wasn’t recognizable. He’d have to explain away the boy’s questions. Mauled by a bear? Yes, that would do. But he couldn’t frighten Malcolm too much. This was supposed to be a relatively pleasant experience for the boy, after all was said and done. 

The Surgeon battled with his thoughts, attempting to reform his plan for the morning. But in  _ this  _ battle, his opponent was not a physical being he could simply beat down. Instead, it was invisible --yet he could feel it, lingering in the darkness of his mind. In this battle, his opponent was a nagging, fearful truth that he had to face.

_ This wasn’t going to work. _

He refused to face that fear. He would not give up. That would be giving up on his son, and he would never give up on his son.

* * *

John didn't know how long he involuntarily napped on the living room floor, limbs splayed like an old mutt after a long day of abuse. He groaned as he came to --and immediately curled up again, his tension and terror returning to him at the same time as his consciousness. After a moment, he risked a glance around. The skillet was discarded on the ground beside him, a painful reminder. John was alone. His pop was gone.

But it hadn’t been his pop, he remembered. His pop was dead. John had dropped a car on his head, years ago, to punish him for all the sinful things he’d done. God had  _ wanted  _ him to do it. He’d  _ called  _ upon John to do it.

John could feel Him calling again now.

He carefully shifted on his hands and knees, knowing he had to get up. He was  _ commanded  _ to get up, and he obeyed. Whitly didn’t stop him this time. Using the arm of the couch for support, John slowly stood up and found that he was not as sore as he should have been, thanks to the alcohol and nicotine. But his intoxication would wear off before long.

John cast his swollen eyes around the room until they came to rest upon the basement door. Then, he eyed the staircase. Slowly, he made the arduous trek up the stairs as if they lead to the peak of Everest. The floorboards  _ creak, creak, creaked _ beneath him despite his best efforts to move quietly. Holding his side, he leaned on the banister, pulling himself up with one arm. A rib shifted within his chest, bone grating against bone, adding to the pain of every ragged breath --every creaky step.

The door to the master bedroom was closed. He tiptoed past it as best he could, his hair on end and his wary gaze locked onto it as if he expected Martin to swing it open and give him the jumpscare that would end his life. The cabin keeper made it past the door without his nightmarish visions coming true, then hurried past the other bedroom door --also closed-- until he collapsed onto the cot in the office.

He desperately dug around for a pack of cigarettes and lit one, coughing as he inhaled its sweet poison. The cough alone just about killed him as it revealed all the internal damage hiding beneath his bones. The hairline fractures. The hemorrhages. He needed to go to a hospital, but there was no hospital around for miles.

A  _ click  _ sounded in the hall.

John froze, listening.

It was not that of a gun. It was that of a door latch.

The man cautiously crept to the doorway, but the only person in the hallway was Malcolm. The boy had come from the second bedroom, not the master. Upon sensing a presence behind him, the child whirled around with a sharp gasp, then asked, “Where’s dad?”

The fact that he was _ asking that _ meant Martin was downstairs.

“Busy,” John rasped.

It was then that the man made up his mind. It was then that he saw the light, and was given his one and only chance to make things right.

He took a broken step forward. “How ‘bout we go on a walk, kid?”

The boy swallowed, his face colorless. It was clear that John had no intention of bringing him  _ back  _ from the midnight stroll. “No thanks.”

The cabin keeper dragged another foot into the hall, moving like a living corpse. “You’ve been cooped-up all day.”

Malcolm backed up and ordered with as much courage as he could muster,  _ “Stay away from me,” _

The Junkyard Killer lunged for him.  _ “Come ’ere!” _

Malcolm ducked back in the second bedroom and slammed the door shut behind him. One of John’s legs gave out, and he crashed against the wood. Clinging to the doorknob to keep himself upright, he readjusted his stance and forced open the barrier with a shove of his shoulder.

* * *

Martin opened his eyes as he heard something soft and meek.

He lifted his head from the pillow of his palm and sat up straight, glancing behind him at The Girl. A feeble noise croaked from her stretched throat, and she lightly convulsed as if trying to cough.

She was waking up already? Martin looked around for a clock before remembering there was none in the basement. His nose wasn’t bleeding anymore and the ice on his knuckles had melted into a cold slush. Sighing, he pulled the gauze from his nostrils, shook out the ice into the drain, and took the cloth to the garden hose in the corner to clean his face.

He paused in his washing and looked to the ceiling as the staircase  _ creak, creak, creaked _ above them.

_ Malcolm. _

His heart raced --even more so as The Girl managed to let out a real cough and bob her head down. Her metabolism truly was extraordinary.

Martin wasn’t ready. He hadn’t cleaned up the mess in the kitchen. He hadn’t thrown John somewhere out of sight to sleep off his concussion. He hadn’t prepared The Girl. He rushed to a tool cart, opening his case of vials.

The Girl moaned.

He greeted her with an announcement. “Change of plans.”

After glancing back to remind himself of the size of the veinal catheter he’d placed into her arm, he picked out the correct gauge of needle from his assortment.

“I’m going to kill you now.”

The Girl whimpered, nearly able to form a question. The question was,  _ ‘Why?’ _

It was the first of many questions to come --not just from her, but also from his son. Martin was already rushing to think of ways to explain the mess upstairs, the pathetic state of his ‘friend,’ the blisters on his own knuckles. He’d have even  _ more  _ explaining to do if Malcolm managed to venture down  _ here, _ which Martin knew the boy was now itching to do.

“I can’t let my son see you like this.”

He gently poked the syringe into a couple of different glass vials, the long needle penetrating through the rubber caps like a mosquito’s labrum, sucking up the drug doses in turn. A few milligrams of this, a few milligrams of that. The exact ratios of his special formula didn’t matter all that much, this time. Paralysis required meticulous measurements. Death did not.

“Wh-wh’bout his l’ssn?” The Girl mumbled.

The lesson that death was nothing to be afraid of.

“He’ll have to learn that lesson another time,” Martin conceded, reluctant to admit to anyone that he’d failed --even to her, who had moments left to live.

Tap, tap, tap. Purge the air bubble at the top. Then, the concoction was ready.

He hurried to her --but held the needle carefully, well away from himself, as if he were running with scissors. Or a very sensitive explosive. One accidental prick, and he would meet a very embarrassing and ironic demise.

“Any last words?” he asked kindly, readying the needle in the plastic hub taped to her elbow. “Quickly, please.”

“Let me see him,” she sputtered, doing her best to speak clearly and quickly despite the lingering effects of her last paralytic.

“No,” he answered distractedly. The hub and the needle subtly clicked into place with each other, and he slipped his fingers into the two sleek metal rings at the end of the plunger.

_ “I’ll tell him anything you want.” _

He hesitated, and gave her a look.

Her offer was  _ almost  _ tempting enough to consider. But he knew it was a trap. She would tell her captor  _ anything  _ to save herself.

But she would also tell  _ Malcolm  _ anything to save herself. That was her point.

The Surgeon straightened his back and contemplated his options, discerning if they were viable. Or at least, if there was some way to  _ make them _ viable.

He thought of the seeds he could plant. The ways in which he could work some kind of harmless poison through his son’s head and change the boy’s perception of the situation. Depending on her acting ability --which the entire arrangement would rely upon-- she could be ‘an old friend.’ She could be ‘someone who came to him for help.’ She could advocate for his work, and explain to Malcolm that his father’s secret side business was simply  _ ‘helping’ _ people by ending their suffering. She could make Malcolm understand. She could show the boy it wasn’t scary, and that everything was fine. Malcolm could be there, watching, as she closed her eyes one last time, falling into a peaceful sleep by Martin’s hand.

Yes, that would be perfect.

_ ‘Yer fuckin’ delusional.’ _

Perhaps it was a foolish fantasy. The truth of the matter was,  _ it wasn’t going to work. _

Martin let his hopes drift away. “Tempting, but… I’d better not.” He winced an empathetic expression at her, then leaned over and placed his touch on the syringe again. “Nice try, though.”

_ “Please!” _ she wailed.

A  _ slam  _ shook the house, followed by a  _ clatter, _ and a loud  _ bump. _

Dust rained down in tiny rivulets through the room, as if the earth surrounding them had suffered an aftershock.

Martin looked up and listened.

“Is that him?” The Girl gasped in terror, breathing quickly. “Is that your son?”

“No, he came… downstairs,” Martin murmured to himself, confused. The slam had been distant, originating upstairs. Those  _ had  _ been Malcolm’s steps on the creaky staircase just a moment ago, hadn’t they? But… what if they hadn’t been? What if  _ John  _ was awake, and had been the one creaking away?

If his boy wasn’t in the safety of the master bedroom--

It was then that they heard a distant scream.

_ “DAD!” _

Martin removed the syringe from her catheter and dropped the tool onto a cart, charging for the basement stairs.

* * *

John forced the door open, one hinge popping free to let the fixture hang crooked from the frame. The brat screamed like a fucking baby, but there was nowhere for him to run. Still, the kid dashed for the meager refuge of the bunk bed. Watkins lunged forward and grabbed the boy’s arm before he could reach shelter. He yanked on the child, spinning him around to pull him into his hold.

He had to do it  _ now, _ before it was too late. If Martin was too pussy to do it, then John would do it himself. It had to be done. For his God. For his mission. For their survival. Even for Whitly, the sick fuck. It was for his own good, even though he was too blind to see it.

John had to kill Malcolm.

But the man’s harsh yank gave his prey enough momentum to land his own fatal blow.

The sword plunged into his body.

* * *

Malcolm felt his blade grinding against bone. He felt the soft organ it penetrated. He felt the wet, squishy shifting of muscle as his pocket knife sheathed completely into the man’s thoracic cavity, all the way to the hilt, where his fingers were tightly clenched, and still trembling. But the knife was in and out quickly, like a paper hole puncher. 

John’s loss of breath was instant as his lung collapsed --his cry of pain garbled by the organ’s deflation. Malcolm jumped back, stunned by the violent, instinctual action he’d taken. Still clutching his pocket knife, he briefly watched the brute crumple to his knees. Then his fear-fueled adrenaline once again overpowered all else, and the child ran out into the hall, screaming, “DAD!!”

He raced through the hall and threw himself down the stairs, nearly tripping on the creaky old steps in his frantic hurry. To his surprise, he crashed right into his father as they both met at the corner of the first floor. 

“Woah!” Martin caught the child’s weapon-wielding wrist, narrowly missing being stabbed himself. “Malcolm, what is it?”

Tears were streaming down the boy’s face. Through misty eyes, he looked up at his father as a great wave of relief overcame his terror, and then he delivered a swift hug to the man’s middle that was just as tight as it was brief. Malcolm was so glad he was  _ here, _ and hadn’t left him alone in the cabin with that monster.

His father did a double take as he saw the boy’s knife was red, and then checked himself to confirm that he hadn’t just been stabbed without realizing it yet. “Why--?”

Malcolm parted from him with a rushed, “John tried to kill me! He tried to kill me!”

Martin’s brows lifted, and he glanced upstairs. “Did he, now?”

To Malcolm's confusion, his father then grinned. His eyes returned to the knife.

The child sniffled and nodded, already circling behind his father, lest John follow him down the stairs. But John was not following him. At least, not yet.

Martin bent down to brush the boy’s hair away from his sweaty forehead. He took a second to look over him with a rapid scan of his eyes, inspecting for damage. “Are you alright? What did he do?”

The ten-year-old nodded again, grimacing with emotion as he answered between huffs, “He… he grabbed my arm, and he said let's go for a walk.”

“And so you stabbed him?”

Malcolm suffered through a few breaths, at a loss for words. Guilt battled with his fear and adrenaline, but it was all muffled by confusion as his father's grin stretched, just shy of snickering. It was as if the man thought it had been a very humorous thing for the boy to do, but Malcolm did not think it was funny at all.

Martin attempted to abandon his smile. “Well, it sounds like I need to have another  _ talk  _ with him,” he murmured optimistically, standing up again. “You stay right here, alright?”

“I wanna go home,” Malcolm blurted. Why couldn’t they just  _ leave? Now. _ Why couldn’t they just get in the car, and drive away?

“Alright, we’ll go home,” Martin hummed. But he was already climbing the stairs. “Let me take care of this first. Stay here. You’re okay, son.”

Malcolm started to hyperventilate to himself. It was like his dad was entirely oblivious to the danger in that house. There was nothing Malcolm could say that would snap him out of his merry delusion. There was nothing Malcolm could do to convince him that  _ nothing  _ about this was okay --that  _ he  _ wasn’t okay-- that this was scary, and that  _ everything wasn’t fine _ ! His father just wouldn’t listen. He didn’t understand.

Malcolm stood alone at the base of the stairs, helpless and frozen like a lost fawn. He fully expected to hear the thunder of John’s shotgun --powerful and deafening like his father’s rifle-- and then he’d feel all too similar to little Bambi, abruptly without his mother.

_ The doe. _

* * *

He needed to grab his gun.

That was all John could think about --that is, beyond the agonizing pain and the accompanying difficulty to breathe. His mouth worked like that of a fish out of water, gasping feebly as he fumbled out of his childhood bedroom and into the hall. His wheezes echoed through the corridor as if he was an out-of-breath cartoon character who’d participated in an exaggeratedly strenuous chase. His body struggled to obey his drive, and he slumped against the wall before his legs gave out again, sending him down to his knees. Even still, he did not stop moving in one disorganized way or another, settling on a mix between stumbling and crawling.

He knew if he didn’t reach the office --reach his  _ gun-- _ then he was a dead man. He’d been blessed with one shot to kill Malcolm, and he’d failed. He’d be granted one last shot to save himself, and if he blew that, it was all over.

_ Creak. Creak. Creak. _

John booked it --to the best of his crippled ability. His heightened fear fucked up his arrhythmic breathing even more, and a wretched cough tore through his one good lung. Despite this, he managed to reach the door frame to the office, grabbing it for support and intending to use it to pull himself inside --where just around the corner….

But his desperation was not enough. A few large, calm steps was all it took for Martin to reach him. The last of those steps was placed upon the back of the cabin keeper’s knee, pinning him where he knelt. The pain it brought him was almost insignificant compared to everything else.

“You didn’t learn your lesson.”

Whitly didn’t let him get up. John couldn’t struggle. Couldn’t turn around and fight, couldn’t wiggle free, couldn't make it the rest of the way inside, where salvation waited in the form of a double barrel shotgun. He gave up, letting go of the door frame and laying his hands on the filthy carpet in front of him like he was bowing on a prayer mat.

His instinct was to curl up again, like one of those puny little pill bugs that kids tortured for fun on school grounds. Whatever armor they possessed was useless against something so much larger and stronger than anything God had intended to be its natural predator.

“Don’,” he wheezed, trying to find his voice. Martin stepped off his leg, but that didn’t mean he was free. John knew he wouldn’t be allowed to inch forward. Instead, he was forced to lie on his side by a firm push from Martin's shoe, like he was rolling over a large barrel.

_ That  _ hurt. John wailed through gritted teeth, immensely dissatisfied with the lack of strength in the sound. He curled to hug his side, protecting whatever wounds he could with his arms. There were too many tender spots to count, but the one that hurt the most was --of course-- the one his tormentor was most interested in uncovering.

“Don’, wai’...” he begged, struggling to speak and seethe through shallow breaths at the same time.

Martin ignored his pleas, kneeling beside him and prying an arm away to inspect his glistening, blood-soaked ribs. “Ah, look at that.”

The cabin keeper timidly tried to resist, like a beaten mutt squirming beneath the expert grip of a careless veterinarian. “Don’,”

Without a hint of hesitation, Whitly slipped a thumb deep into the wound.

John reacted with a rasped,  _ “Aaagh--!”  _ which was nowhere near as loud as it should have been. It was a whimper more than anything, lacking the lung capacity to scream. But oh, how he wanted to  _ scream. _

_ “Ohhh, _ he got you  _ good, _ John,” Martin chuckled, measuring the depth and the extent of the damage before finally slipping his finger out of the gushing wound to wipe it clean on the corner of the man’s shirt. “I told you he had potential.” His smile was warm and affectionate as he purred, “My boy.” His smile grew until it was euphoric. Like he’d found the long-awaited happy ending he’d been dreaming of.

Everything really was going to be alright. He always knew it would be.

“Don’ kill me,” the stabbed man sputtered.

“Oh, no. I won’t interfere with his work,” Martin promised. “I’m going to let nature take its course.”

The world-class surgeon --who was entirely capable of repairing that lung, of numbing his pain, of saving his life-- was simply going to crouch there beside him and watch him slowly die. Martin thought it was a rather fitting ending, for such a pathetic waste of human flesh. Watkins didn’t deserve any sort of special treatment, like The Girl did.

They had time to talk. Martin knew exactly how long it would take the man to bleed out with that kind of wound. “You know, I  _ never  _ thought my son’s first kill would be  _ you,”  _ he grinned, a pleasantly surprised sweetness in his voice. How poetic, his own son slaying his protégé. And then taking his place beside his father to carry on the work. A real coming of age story. “It’s perfect,” he mused.

John was more occupied with trying to cycle oxygen through the straw that had become of his lungs than listening to his ex-partner’s rambling. Again, Martin was extremely talented at carrying on full conversations with himself, whether he was aware of it or not. But Watkins became distracted from sucking in his whistling breath when Martin’s knuckle pressed against his jaw, turning his head up to him in an almost intimate fashion.

“Let it be known, John,” he wished. “Your biggest mistake was that you doubted  _ my son,” _ Martin preached, a possessive, proud growl at the tail end of it. The degenerate’s last lesson.

Neither of them had any idea that those words would forever hold true.

Now, John was listening. His thoughts turned to Malcolm.

“Whr’  _ is  _ your son?” Watkins hissed.

“Downstairs.” Martin was sure of that, this time.

“An’ th’ Girl?”

It went without saying that she was downstairs too, though one level deeper.

Martin  _ had  _ closed the basement door, hadn’t he?

John saw the question flash across the man’s bearded face. “You ffffuckin’ idiot. You fuckin’ left him down there. With  _ her.” _

Whitly glared at him, stubbornly refusing to entertain his doubts and fears. He would not allow John any satisfaction, nor allow the man to mock him, in his final moments.

But then, they heard Malcolm's voice.

The boy called out a distant, yet distinct,  _ “Wait!” _

John watched a flood of fear flash across Martin's face.

This time, he wasn’t calling for his dad.

* * *

Malcolm furrowed his brow. “What?”

“You called out, _ ‘Wait.’” _ John repeated, more slowly. “And a few other things, but I don’t remember them,” he mumbled, disinterested in trying to remember. “Sounded like you were outside. On the porch.” He played with the chain of his handcuffs, rubbing it back and forth along it’s anchor point on the table.

Malcolm blinked. After a moment of evaluation, he concluded, “You’re lying.”

John shook his head once. “Honest to God, kid.”

Malcolm glared at him, picking apart every atom of that man’s facial features in a desperate hunt for the truth. John maintained eye contact, holding nothing out of reach. Hiding nothing behind any walls. 

“You heard me call out to another person?” Malcolm clarified.

“Honest to God,” John repeated.

“To who?”

“Only other person in that cabin was her,” John lifted a brow enticingly.

Malcolm felt his heart rate quicken. He fought valiantly to combat his hopes, to stifle them and beat them down so they didn’t betray his calm, collected poker face.

He failed.

“I found her?” he exhaled, shocked by the possibility. If he  _ had  _ found her, then perhaps it hadn’t been in a forest, where she lay dead or dying. “She was still alive?”

“Yeah,” John snorted bitterly. “Your dad had  _ one  _ job, and he didn’t do it. He was holding out for that  _ stupid  _ scavenger hunt with you.” He tipped his head and corrected with even more bitterness, “Well,  _ two  _ jobs, and he didn’t do  _ either  _ of them.”

Malcolm leaned forward and applied a firm urgency to his voice, dying to know, “What happened to The Girl?” 

“I dunno, kid,” Watkins shrugged.

The profiler didn’t accept that answer. “You must know.”

“I don’t. I was a bit occupied with trying to breathe through a collapsed lung,” John grumbled, picking at his teeth with his tongue. He lifted his brows at the brat, mentioning, “You know, you never apologized for that.”

Malcolm didn't skip a beat, spreading his hands and countering, _ “You _ never apologized for trying to kill me,” with a snarky smile. "Twice."

John chuckled a cruel, annoyed, and defeated chuckle, turning his head to glance at the wall.

“What happened next?” the consultant pressed.

“I. Don’t. Know,” John drawled in pieces. “As I said, I was a bit _ busy.” _

Malcolm tried to keep shoveling coal in the burner, not intending to allow this engine to stall. “With my dad, right? What did he do to you next? Tell me,” he asked, fully prepared and expecting to hear of more violence. More brutality. More _ pain. _

John was not pleased to see the eager anticipation on the profiler’s face. “Nothin’. He left to deal with  _ you.  _ Don’t you  _ ‘remember?’”  _ he mocked, knowing the profiler didn’t remember. He used that same childish tone when he’d called the boy a scaredy cat in the kitchen all those years ago.

Malcolm was much too old now to be bothered by the man’s immaturity.

John smirked. “Or did he  _ beat  _ it out of your head?”

“My dad wouldn’t do that to me,” Malcolm defended. He may have given the man a certain smile of smugness when he next testified, “He would never hurt me like he hurt you.”

Call it ‘favoritism.’

John held the profiler’s gaze, a wounded anger behind his eyes.

Malcolm tipped his head, that same smile still on his face, which was all too similar to Martin's for John's liking.

John tried to read the brat’s expression. He almost seemed to be mentally inquiring what the common denominator was behind all of John’s past abuse. It wasn’t his abusers. John had been the sole victim of each. Or at least, they hadn’t beat anyone else quite as much as they beat him. No, the common denominator was  _ John. John  _ was the problem.  _ John  _ was the reason John was beaten at every chime of the clock.  _ John  _ was the reason his parents couldn’t raise him, his grandparents couldn’t love him, his mentor couldn't stand him, his God abandoned him.

But maybe he was reading too far into the profiler’s smile. Wasn’t he? Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe the truth was, Malcolm’s smile was saying,  _ ‘I _ had a good childhood.  _ I _ had parents who loved me.  _ I _ had a  _ father  _ who loved me. I had  _ Martin, _ who loved me. Who was proud of every single thing I did, even when I didn’t listen. Even when I disobeyed. Even when I made a mistake. Even when I turned on him, even when I  _ destroyed  _ him, just like you said I would.’

Maybe John had always read those things in the boy’s smile, every single time he saw him, from the moment he first laid eyes on the little fucker.

John gazed at the profiler as if he was murdering him in his mind. Over and over, in all sorts of ways. “Oh yeah?” he purred loathingly, tilting his head as he questioned the brat’s stalwart beliefs. “You sure about that?”

“My father never beat me,” Malcolm stated again. He had no missing memories as far as that went. “I know, because if he did, my mother would have seen the bruises, and my mother has never seen bruises on me.” She always had a conniption if her son had so much as a spot of  _ mud  _ anywhere on him.

A smile slowly returned to John’s face, as if he’d detected something Malcolm had yet to realize. “Ah. Right.” He stopped killing him in his mind, as if he’d won some kind of battle and was now satisfied.

Malcolm endured a twinge of confusion, and doubt. Had he spun his own web to get tangled in? He thought back about what he’d said about his mother seeing any bruises on him, and then, he realized. Surely, that wasn’t the  _ only  _ reason why he’d been unscathed by his father’s burning rage.

Was it?

He tried not to entertain those doubts. They didn’t matter. What mattered was the story, and discovering the truth about what happened to The Girl.

“What did you do after my dad left?”

“I got the hell outta that cabin,” John scoffed. “Grabbed my gun, stuffed an entire coat into my wound, fell down the stairs, grabbed the first aid bag, and burst out the back door.”

“Where did you go?”

“To the creek.” 

* * *

Stuffed like the taxidermied animals that were watching him from heaven above, John grabbed his shotgun, checked that it was loaded, bumbled down the stairs like a sack of bricks, and immediately skirted away from the basement door-- which was indeed wide open. It wasn’t the only one. The front door was wide open too, and there was no one in the house. Huffing and puffing and wheezing and clamoring over every piece of furniture still standing from their earlier fight, he snatched the first aid kid and fled through the kitchen.

On his way to the creek, he paused in his frantic hobbling as he heard a scream in the distance. He couldn’t tell if it was human. It could have just as likely been a squeal or cry from a bird or other critter. He continued hobbling, his side pulsating with crimson at every step. Just as he reached the crest of the short ridge --which felt like a mountain when his legs could barely function-- he flinched at the echoing crackle of a gunshot.

Wheezing and in agony, he hauled himself over the natural barrier, losing his footing and sliding down the small slope to the creek, where he splashed into the bubbling brook. The water was not clean and it stung like a bitch as it seeped into his scrapes and sores --even more prominent in the growing light of dawn. He flinched at the sound of another gunshot and did all he could to stifle a terrible cough for fear of it giving away his location. 

Sitting against the dirt wall behind him, he fumbled to position his gun in his arms, aiming up and to the side, at the gap in the spindly skeletal aspen trees where he’d come from. If Martin was coming for him, he’d be coming up over that ridge, right in that window. Unlike the rifle, the shotgun didn’t have to aim, and he’d be able to secure the victory, this time.

Watkins waited, wheezing as quietly as he could through the deflation of his lung.

Roots sprawled out of the layered mud like fingers trying to grab at his head and shoulders. The creek trickled over and past his boots like they were river stones. He tucked his legs in, making himself as small as he could to fit in the small hiding spot. Though his arms ached with bruises and fatigue, trembling with exhaustion and the nitro fuel of adrenaline, he held his gun on his heaving chest, muzzle aimed diagonally up at the patch of sky to his right.

“Come on, fucker, come on,” he whispered under his nonexistent breath. Martin needed to show up. _ Now, _ before John passed out. Before he bled out. He was going to kill that psycho if it was the last thing he ever did. He’d show up  _ right there, _ in that blank spot, silhouetted against the milky blue morning sky.

But the hunter never came. In fact, as John strained to listen through the blood pumping in his ears and the wheezing in his one good lung, he thought he heard an engine. Risking a peek over the edge of the grass tufts, he looked back at the cabin, his gun still at the ready.

The station wagon squealed away, bumbling down the dirt road, away from the cabin. John hesitated before he forced himself to stand up. He stumbled back to the cabin, straight for his keys and wallet, then to his green truck.

* * *

“But that son of a bitch popped my tires,” John growled “I had to walk.  _ Walk, _ kid, I fuckin’  _ walked  _ all the way back to the interstate. Do you have any idea--?”

“What about The Girl?” Malcolm interrupted.

John shrugged, smirking at Malcolm's worry. “I told ya, I don’t know. Maybe he shot her.”

“You heard  _ two  _ gunshots?”

“Yup.”

“My dad doesn’t shoot twice,” Malcolm shook his head. He could hit a running deer on the first try for Christ’s sake. He knew his gun like the back of his hand, and he was a good shot. He wouldn’t miss such an easy target as a human.

“Wull, I figured, he’d used  _ one  _ for her, and  _ one  _ for you,” John drawled. “Evidently, not.”

Malcolm feared getting his hopes up, but was there a chance? A small chance? “Did she survive?” he asked. “Did she get away?”

The Junkyard Killer made a face. “Guess it’s a mystery.”


	20. The Bracelet

Malcolm stared at his pocket knife, which he still clutched in his trembling hand. The blade glistened with dark cherry liquid, splotched in an amoeba-shaped pattern across the flat surface. The blood seemed to argue with itself, yearning to both obey the downward pull of gravity but also yearning to cling where it puddled on the steel. The boy gazed at it, at a loss for what to do.

He remembered when he’d accidentally cut his hand at the creek, and how the water had washed the blade clean when he’d dropped it onto the river stones. He looked up and over to the sink, then noticed the mess in the kitchen. Dishes were scattered across the countertop --some on the ground-- disturbed from their place on the drying rack as if it had exploded. Additionally, the shards of a brown liquor bottle were sprawled across the tile floor, turning the kitchen into a minefield. As he continued turning his head, scanning the broken home, Malcolm took in the sight of the living room. There, stools were overturned, the couch was scooted at an angle, splintered pieces of a dining chair were heaped like firewood, and a cooking skillet lay overturned on the carpet.

Like his knife, the skillet, too, needed to be cleaned.

The boy hesitated before walking over to pick up the heavy cast iron object. The pan was slick with bacon grease. Somewhere, far, far in the back of his mind, he knew it wasn’t grease. He knew it was blood. He knew where it came from, and how it’d got there. Somewhere, miles away in his foggy mind, he knew exactly what had happened. But the fog buried the truth. He allowed it to. He welcomed that haze into his mind, like he was drawing a familiar blanket over his head, hiding from the nightmares which surrounded him.

The child made his way into the kitchen with both the dirty skillet and the dirty pocket knife, his mind entirely occupied with only his careful navigation through the wreckage the adults had left in their wake. Mouth agape in a dumbstruck gaze, he stood on his tip toes, gently set the skillet in the sink, and reached across to turn on the creaky faucet. Water poured from the spout. He held his knife under it, staring at the blood as it was rapidly carried away by the cleansing current.

If only the water could wash everything else away, too.

His distant gaze wandered, and he caught sight of something out-of-place by the faucet. He picked it up, the small chain and delicate charms dangling from his small hands. It was a bracelet. A girl’s bracelet. But it was too big to be Ainsley’s, and not expensive-looking enough to be his mother’s. It glistened in the dim aura of the kitchen. It shimmered in the thick fog of his memory. A tiny source of reflective light in the limitless darkness. The boy might have sworn that he’d seen it somewhere before, but he didn’t remember.

Gradually, he turned a glance to the basement door.

It was open.

_‘You go down there, and I promise you.’_

_‘You’ll remember.’_

* * *

Malcolm didn’t remember anything after that.

The profiler stood in front of the giant half-circle window in his bedroom, watching the grey sky weep beyond the aged, dusty panels of glass. His expression was chiseled with concentration, his brows knitted intensely. His sharp eyes followed each drizzle of water as if waiting for one of the raindrops to lead him to some answers. But the torrent led him nowhere. Eventually, he sighed and held up a plastic baggie. In it was the bracelet.

Committing every detail of that bracelet to memory --lest he forget about it again-- he waited for his recollection to reunite with his recognition. But no memories were rekindled.

Had she escaped? Had she survived?

He had to know.

Despite having collided head-first into a dead end, the profiler was not deterred. He never was. It was his gift, and his curse. It was what made him so good at his job, and also so sleep-deprived and malnourished. After pulling out his phone, his eyes locked onto the silver trinket in the bag as he spoke. “Ains. I need a favor.”

* * *

A news report flashed across the television. The broadcast boasted of ‘Breaking News’ and was delivered by a solemn reporter.

“Just into the newsroom, a newly recovered piece of evidence in what is believed to be one of The Surgeon’s countless homicides.”

Beside her, an image was enlarged on screen.

“If you recognize this bracelet, please….”

The reporter paused, and again emphasized, _“Please,”_ as if this wasn’t just a story she was instructed to read from the teleprompter, but something more. Something personal.

That’s because it was.

“Contact the NYPD.”

* * *

Whenever Mr. David entered the cell outside of their strict schedule, it only meant one thing.

“Call for you,” the guard announced, holding the door open. “From Rikers.”

Martin smiled, knowing it was Malcolm. He obediently joined Mr. David in the hall, and lifted his cuffed hands to accept the handset from the corded phone on the wall.

 _“Well,_ how’d it go?” he grinned, anticipating a rather exciting conversation about what his son ‘discovered’ during his visit. “Did you tell John I said ‘Hello?”

“You could tell me yourself.”

Dr. Whitly’s cheer fizzled like a dying firework, so palpable it was nearly audible.

“Why, in God’s name, are **_you_ **calling me?” He snarled the word, sinister and spiteful.

“To warn you.”

“About _what?”_ The Surgeon bit his teeth together.

“Malcolm _knows,_ Martin.”

“Knows what? Knows what happened to The Girl?” Dr. Whitly scoffed. “No, he doesn’t.”

Malcolm would _never_ know, yet he would _always_ seek to find out, and therefore he would always _come back to his father,_ like a little boomerang, because, _“I’m_ the only one who knows what happened to The Girl,” Martin declared triumphantly.

“No,” John chuckled. “Not the stupid Girl, Martin.”

Dr. Whitly’s triumph crumbled like the childish fantasy it was.

“It’s not _about_ her,” John’s distorted voice snickered over the phone. “It’s _never_ been about her. She’s only ever been a distraction for you both, taking your attention away from the _real_ issue here.”

Dr. Whitly waited, until John finally laid it out for him in one simple word.

_“You.”_

Watkins continued, a surreptitious smile behind his words, “Malcolm knows the truth about _you,_ Martin.”

Dr. Whitly puffed out his chest, intimidating the wall in front of him with a challenging tilt of his head. “Oh, and what’s that?”

“That you’re a _monster.”_

“Malcolm is fully aware of my achievements,” Martin boasted. His impressive track record was not news to anybody who _read_ the news in the past twenty three years.

“I’m not talking about your kill count,” John snapped. “I’m talking about the way you _pretend_ you love him.”

Dr. Whitly’s jaw tensed.

“But in reality, you only see him as a disposable heap of _garbage._ A _failure_ , like me.”

Having heard enough of this, Martin hissed into the phone, “You're planting _seeds_ in his head again. You’re trying to destroy what little I have left of my relationship with my son!”

“You don’t need my help to do that.”

The surgeon ignored his interruption. “It’s not going to work, John.” Dr. Whitly paced as much as he could, chained to the wall by that corded phone. “I was _always_ good to him. I _never_ hurt him. I _love_ my boy.”

The phone laughed.

“Sure sounds like you’re tryin’ to convince someone, and it ain’t me,” John remarked with a smirk in his tone. “Let it be known, Martin, that your biggest mistake was not heeding my warnings,"The Junkyard Killer purred. “You will _never_ learn your lesson.”

The call ended with a monotonous dial tone, like a flatline on an EKG signaling a death.

Martin removed the handset from his ear and took a deep breath as he gingerly replaced it onto the receiver, moving carefully, as if the device might explode if he handled it too roughly.

Then he flashed Mr. David a pleasant smile.

Because everything was alright.

* * *

Malcolm waited.

It was torturous for him. He had no choice but to wait --to allow the photograph to spread like wildfire-- and it did, thanks to his mother’s fanning of the flames. Gil helped spread the word too, and JT, and Dani, and of course, his sister, whose reach extended nearly as far as their socialite mother’s, thanks to her network of media connections. Luckily, the waiting (and fanning) paid off. The profiler did not have to wait for long.

Gil soon approached him at the precinct, escorting a young woman behind him as a guest. “Bright, someone you should meet.” The lieutenant introduced them somberly. “This is Ms. Blanchard.”

She was around his age. Doe-eyed, with locks of hair the color of spun gold. She looked hopeful, yet also frightened of something unseen. “Eve,” she corrected, holding out a slender hand to the consultant. Formalities were the last things on her mind, but she politely followed through with them all the same.

“Hello, Eve.” The profiler took her feminine hand in his larger one, shook it tenderly, and smiled. “Malcolm.”

Lieutenant Arroyo explained, “Ms. Blanchard says she recognizes that bracelet you recovered.”

 _“You_ recovered it?” Eve asked, her face alight. Malcolm could detect the urgency breaking through her guarded expression. “Where?”

“Unfortunately, that’s classified, Ms.--”

“No, it’s okay.” Malcolm held up a hand to stop Gil, then disclosed formally, “Another serial killer was in possession of it. One who worked closely with The Surgeon.” His voice was professional, yet sincere.

“Oh.” Eve struggled to reign control over her wide range of emotions. “So it… it belonged to one of his murder victims?”

Malcolm answered her very carefully. “We don’t know what happened to this particular victim. We’re trying to find out.”

“Can I see it? The bracelet? I want to be… sure.” She clutched the handle of her purse, digging her painted nails into the leather to distract herself from her storming thoughts.

Her fears.

“Yeah.” Malcolm brought out the plastic baggie and the bracelet, handing it over for her to inspect.

She held the plastic pouch gingerly, and after a moment of staring at the jewelry within it --horror-struck and agonized with a renewed sensation of loss-- the woman began to weep.

She did indeed recognize it.

Moments like these were always heartbreaking and awkward, but the Lieutenant and the profiler stood with her as she suffered internally. Malcolm wanted to offer her comfort, but didn’t want to intrude on her anguish or make her uncomfortable.

“This was my sister’s,” the woman finally wailed, hugging the bag to her bosom. 

Malcolm’s poker face strained to conceal his own emotions. He was grateful that Eve did not know he was the son of her sister’s potential killer. He refrained from mentioning the possibility of her sister having survived the terrible experience. He didn’t want to raise this woman’s hopes only to crush them when the trail went cold again, or when they discovered where The Girl’s remains were waiting to be found.

“Can you tell us a bit about her?” Lieutenant Arroyo prompted gently.

Malcolm grabbed a tissue box and handed it to the woman. She took it, still hugging the bracelet to her chest, and wiped her eyes. “Her name was Sophie.”

“Sophie Blanchard?”

“No, no.” Eve shook her head. “She… she changed her name. A few times. Last I knew, she went by Sophie Sanders.” She succumbed to another sob and squeaked out a tight, “I’ve been searching for her for years,” through her tears. “She disappeared. I thought… I thought….”

“It’s alright, Eve. Take your time,” Malcolm murmured warmly. He gestured to the conference room, where they could continue their conversation in private. “Would you like to take a seat?”

The three of them settled at the large oak table. Malcolm poured her a drink while Gil fetched her a blanket --something soft to hold and touch that would comfort her. This was not their first rodeo. Somewhere in the middle of it all, Malcolm found his hand trapped in the tight grip of Ms. Blanchard’s, and claimed a seat next to her, unable to free himself from her hold even if he wanted to. Eve didn’t mean to clutch his hand. She was in a daze of mourning, and he didn’t dare break it and embarrass her.

“Why did your sister use different names?” Gil wondered.

“She ran away from our foster parents when she was sixteen,” Eve sniffled. She stared at the bracelet, now on the table in front of her, like it was a rose lying over a casket. “She wasn’t able to take me with her. She changed her name again when she got caught up in an abusive relationship. Then there was something with drugs... I was too young to understand at the time, but now I think she was working as a mule to make ends meet.”

“She sent me postcards every two weeks. I told our foster parents I had a pen pal assignment at school. As far as I know, they never read our letters, but we referred to each other in code names just in case.” She laughed, painfully reminiscing, “I was her ‘Little Bird.’ I liked to sing when we were little. She always said she missed her Little Bird’s songs. She always wrote that she couldn’t wait to see her Little Bird again, that one day her Little Bird would be free to fly away with her.”

Her frail smile faded as she remembered, “When her letters stopped…”

She didn’t continue, but did notice that she was squeezing a complete stranger’s hand. She let Malcolm go, apologizing, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he told her. Sitting up straight, he glanced at Gil. “We need to start a database search for everyone under the name ‘Sophie Sanders,’ and any other aliases she’s used before."

“I’ve already looked,” Eve shook her head in dismay, still soaking in the sight of that bracelet. “I hired a private investigator. _Multiple_ private investigators. They’ve found nothing.”

“We’ll search the database anyway,” Gil assured. “Maybe there’s something your PI’s missed.”

Malcolm appreciated the man’s attempt to console Ms. Blanchard, but his mind churned with troubling thoughts. Surely, if The Girl had escaped --if she had _survived--_ something would have come up before now. Something more than a serial killer’s souvenir.

It was difficult to say goodbye to Ms. Blanchard. Malcolm could tell something within her had died after seeing that bracelet. A flickering candlelight in her soul, doused along with the last of her hopes. As she nodded in response to their farewells, she smiled falsely and turned to leave. Her movements looked robotic, her face pale, her body a corpse --taxidermied, and hollow.

Malcolm couldn’t bear to leave her like that.

He jogged after her, stopping her with a light touch on her shoulder when she didn’t hear him call her name. “Eve,” he began, finding he didn’t know what to say. She stared at him vacantly, having given up the fight to conceal her emptiness. He held her shoulders and looked into her eyes, promising, “Everything is going to be okay.”

She seemed to cling to his words like she’d inadvertently clung to his hand in that conference room, and as he nodded and repeated his promise --his touch warm against her cold and lifeless shoulders-- she began to come to life once again.

“We’re going to do everything in our power to find her,” he vowed, amending, _“I_ will do everything in my power to find her. Okay? Do you believe that?”

She nodded distantly, but each nod brought her back to here, and now. This man didn’t have to be here, standing outside in the cold with her, saying all this to her. This man didn’t have to _mean_ what he said, yet he did mean it. He truly _meant_ it, like she wasn’t just some random person’s grieving family member. Instead, he spoke like it was personal. Like _he_ was a grieving family member, too.

That was because it was, and, in a way, he was.

Eve hugged him tightly. He wrapped his arms around her back and let her cry once again, deeply into the crook of his shoulder and neck, until his coat and button-up shirt were soaked. His cologne was comforting, and his arms were steady and strong.

Maybe it was then that she fell in love with him. When he convinced her that everything was going to be alright. When he made her believe him. When he gave her hope, and light.

* * *

_“DAD!!”_

It was not the first time he’d heard that scream. Martin rushed up the stairs once more, flying up the steep terrain like a pheasant rocketing skyward out of the undergrowth. He knew what he’d find. He’d find _her,_ holding a gun to his son’s temple. Or maybe it would be a knife against his throat again, or maybe she’d be suffocating the child, this time.

Pleading wouldn’t work on her. Reasoning wouldn’t work on her. Bargaining and threatening wouldn’t work on her --just as it all hadn’t worked on _him_ when _he’d_ been the one with a life teetering precariously in his hands.

He’d plead and reason and bargain and threaten anyway. He’d do whatever it took to save his son. He always did. And somehow, he always succeeded. Control of the situation always returned to _him,_ and never stayed with her. The weapon always ended up in _his_ hands, not hers. _He_ was always the one who possessed the power to end a life, not her.

Dr. Whitly always managed to harness the subconscious willpower necessary to turn his nightmares in his favor. Distantly, in the back of his mind, he knew this, and was not truly afraid. Regardless of his omniscient knowledge, the scene would play out with him feeling the same panic and desperation he always did. The same cruel satisfaction when his boy smiled at him --just before the nightmare switched into a wonderful, wonderful dream where he finished the job he was meant to finish, and carved into her the way he was supposed to, all those years ago.

But as he burst into his son's childhood bedroom --lit with the spinning shapes of stars and knights and dragons, and speckled with similar toys of fantastical storytelling nature-- Martin stopped dead in his tracks.

It wasn’t _her_ who held his son at gunpoint. It was John.

A genuine rage replaced his performative fear. Whatever pathetic, begging, mewling role he was supposed to play in this nightmare crumbled. He ripped apart the script and broke through the fourth wall of his subconscious to spew fire from his throat, roaring demands and accusations and whatever insults he could think of to berate the apparition of his old killing partner for interfering with his familiar dream.

John only smiled and ignored him, hauling the ten year old away to the other side of the room. Martin lunged after him with teeth bared, grabbing his shoulder and yanking the man back. His other fist was balled and ready for a grand swing.

But when John turned around, it _wasn’t_ John. It was an entirely different, and _worse_ monster _._

Martin was face to face with _himself,_ and true terror triumphed over all other fragmented emotions.

Pleading wouldn’t work on him. Reasoning wouldn’t work on him. Bargaining and threatening wouldn’t work on him, just as it had _never_ worked on him. He couldn’t defeat that version of himself. He couldn’t fight it, or control it, and least of all, _change_ it. He was helpless to it, powerless against it.

That was the fear, anyway. And in nightmares, fear conquered all.

Martin looked down to see the pistol in one hand, and his son in his other. His palm was under the boy’s chin, his grip tight around his jaw. Martin gazed at Malcolm’s upturned face, the top of his head pressed against his stomach. Malcolm did not smile up at him. He was crying, trembling against him with his head cranked back.

They were the only two people in the room. The only two people in the world.

In these dreams, Martin had always done whatever it took to save his son. He knew now, in this newly twisted form of torment, it would take something more drastic than ever before to accomplish that. He needed to turn that gun on himself, before it was too late.

But he couldn't do it. He was paralyzed.

_“Why??”_

Once again, Martin didn’t have an answer.

The deafening sound of the gunshot ricocheted through the room.

It wasn’t a short, sharp, firecracker _pop!_ like that which a mere handgun was supposed to make. This sound was deep, hollow, and canon-like. It was the sound of the Whitly family Winchester.

The nightmare was not so merciful as to end with the gunshot. Martin remained there, paralyzed, watching what was left of his child’s expression shift into one of peace --like he was undergoing a beautiful metamorphosis. Warm to cold. Alive to dead. The boy became so still, he seemed frozen in a shell of himself. A chrysalis, preserved yet draining.

He wasn’t the only one.

For Martin, time felt frozen.

They stood together, both hollow, both empty, as shadowy shapes of knights and dragons and stars slowly waltzed around them.

* * *

Malcolm stayed up well into the night looking through the sisters’ letters. Eve was asleep on his couch, an extra pillow under her head and a heavy fur blanket draped over her clothed body, giving shape to her natural crests and dips, like a mountain range of beauty.

He’d exchanged numbers with her on the street, and arranged for her to drop off her box of memories at his apartment. He was certain that something in their letters would provide a clue to The Girl in The Box’s whereabouts, or potential aliases which they’d yet to identify. But the letters were not helpful. Only heartbreaking. Sophie seemed like she’d been a good big sister. Her and Eve had clearly loved each other, and thought the world of each other. They were the closest of friends, and all that each other had.

He knew how deeply a loss like that could sting.

Malcolm finished scrutinizing the last letter, having gone through the entire box three times by that point, and set the postcard down to rub the exhaustion from his face. He rested his head in the palm of his hand and gazed at the woman sleeping on his couch, imagining her pain and loneliness. Perhaps she had been haunted for all these years by phantoms of her sister just as Malcolm had.

No matter what lay ahead, no matter what they’d find, the profiler vowed he’d never allow Eve to feel so much pain and loneliness ever again.

Malcolm was no longer hunting down the truth to bring answers and peace to himself. Now, he was hunting down the truth to bring those things to _her,_ and that was immeasurably more important. Finding Eve had rekindled something within himself just as finding him had rekindled something within her. A new fire had sparked in the consultant’s chest. A fire that burned with a yearning to do _good,_ and to be the knight in shining armor that saved the day.

Always.

As Malcolm gazed at her --as his heart clenched with renewed emotion, passion, and dedication-- his mind swam with thoughts, ideas, and calculations. He searched as thoroughly through the lingering remains of his childhood fog as he and Eve had searched the Earth. His gaze wandered above her, to the display cases of historical weaponry on the wall. Above the fireplace mantle, where his new TV poised in dark dormancy, one weapon stood out from all the rest.

It was an old Winchester, sleek and of medium length. The stock was fashioned from polished rosewood and the barrel was forged from matte iron. A strip of tanned leather hung from it, similar to a guitar strap.

Jessica hadn’t burned it in the bonfire of her ex-husband’s belongings because she feared it would ‘explode, or something,’ she’d said. She’d given it to then-Detective Arroyo to dispose of, and when little Malcolm had approached him asking for its life to be spared, Gil had promised to give it to him when he was old enough to have it.

Gil had kept his promise.

Malcolm had often wondered how many lives that firearm had stolen. Animal, and human alike. He only found comfort in the fact that it would never take another life again, thanks to his imprisonment of the object in a glass case --where it belonged for the rest of its life.

He briefly thought of his father, and pushed such thoughts away.

Malcolm's thoughts next reflected upon John’s testimony. The two gunshots. The station wagon squealing away.

_‘That son of a bitch slashed my tires.’_

‘Walk, _kid, I had to_ walk _back to the interstate.’_

If John had survived all of his injuries, which was a miracle in and of itself, it was not quite so foolish to have faith that Sophie might have survived whatever had been hers. Perhaps… if _\--if--_ she had escaped The Surgeon, then the first place she would have gone would have been the same place John had gone.

The hospital.

Malcolm suddenly knew he needed to search the records of the nearest hospital to John’s cabin.

The profiler stood up and grabbed his things to leave, hesitating only to scrawl a note that he left for Eve on the coffee table, promising he’d be back and urging her to make herself at home in his apartment --though he didn’t have much food to offer.

Sunshine would keep her company until he returned.


	21. The Boy

The basement door was not only open, but  _ gaping _ \-- like the maw of a beast.

It was a void that perpetually inhaled, like a black hole, intent on consuming him. It reeled him in like a hooked minnow, its ominous attraction irresistible. The boy was a prisoner to his curiosity --to his  _ fear. _ He didn’t run from it. He  _ fell _ into it.

He didn’t have a choice.

It pulled him in, and swallowed him whole.

The subterranean space beyond that door was dark. Darker than the rest of the shuttered cabin. There were shapes in the darkness. Ebbing and changing shapes. Shapes nearly-impossible to make out, even if he strained his eyes and absorbed every drop of meager light he could through his dilated pupils.

He was afraid of the monsters he’d find in that darkness. Monsters he couldn’t see, but which he could hear, and feel. He couldn’t help but imagine an eldritch creature made of nebulous black smoke, who was unstoppable, and who would either kill him or bury itself deep within him. Either way, the next thing he’d know….

All he could feel was a tickling coldness on his exposed face. His heart beat faster and faster against his ribs --its rate increasing the longer he stood there thinking to himself about all of the terrible things that he couldn't see down those basement stairs. All of the terrible things that fed off the darkness.

After a while, the boy spoke up. “Dad?” Although his voice was a whisper, it felt too loud. “Dad, what’s down here?”

The longer Malcolm stared into the cavernous space, the more his memories blurred. Dreams became reality, and reality became dreams.

_ ‘Dad? What’s in here?’ _

Was he wearing his pajamas or his camping clothes? Was he wearing his navy blue robe, or his navy blue rain jacket? Was he treading lightly down the stairs of the cabin’s basement, or that of his own house?

Malcolm didn’t know anymore.

_ 'What’s in the box?’ _

He listened, and thought he heard a sound. It was a rare, rasping, sporadic sound, and it did not satisfy his curiosity and wandering imagination. His brain kept telling him there must be something  _ more,  _ down there. There must be something _ else. _

Something living.

Breathing.

_ Screaming. _

* * *

The dog’s eyes were bright and glistening like the starry night sky. His canines were clean and his smile was bursting with an innocent joy. Soft floppy ears, a wet black nose, and a lolling tongue greeted the veterinarian as she performed her routine check-up.

“He looks very healthy,” the vet diagnosed with a smile, rubbing the pooch’s velvety face. “Healthy and happy.”

His owners were chatty, commencing to enthusiastically reminisce about their fur baby’s propensity for digging through the flower garden, but the vet didn’t mind. She listened to the recount, laughed along with them, and cooed at the mutt with the same level of adoration. Finally, they bid her farewell, promising, “Until next time,’ and left her to continue her work. The veterinarian was ready to see her next patient.

She beamed upon meeting it. “What a pretty little bird. Let’s let him out of that cage and have a look at him,” she offered, gently opening the tiny barred gate and reaching in to scoop the parakeet into her hands. His yellow feathers were dainty and soft. His beady eyes were wide with wonder as he glanced around the clinic, his focus landing on her smile. “What’s his name?” she asked his owner.

“Sunshine,” the young man answered.

“Oh, how sweet,” she grinned. “He  _ does  _ look like a ‘Sunshine.’ Hello, Sunshine,” she hummed, rubbing her knuckle against the creature’s breast. He twittered excitedly at her affection. “And what seems to be the matter with Sunshine today?” she asked, glancing back up at his owner.

“Nothing,” the young man murmured. “He’s perfectly fine.” The man was smiling, but he also appeared as if he was about to cry. Water beaded at the corner of his eyes.

The veterinarian’s face morphed into a curious expression. “Is... everything alright?” she asked warily.

“Yes.” His smile broke into a grin as relief poured from his voice. “Yes, it is.” 

Now, everything was truly alright.

“I’m sorry,’ he shook his head. “My name isn’t really Malcolm Bright.”

She hesitantly glanced at the patient form on the examination table, his information at the top of it. Taking the document in her free hand, she eyed the false name he’d written.

“It’s Malcolm Whitly.”

The veterinarian’s gaze snapped back to him sharply. The flash of fear in her eyes stung him, but her alarm did not last long.

“And… I believe  _ your  _ real name is Sophie,” he disclosed gently. “Sanders.”

“Oh my God.” With her eyes glued to him, the woman’s jaw dropped in disbelief. Her hands opened, sending the patient document seesawing to the floor.

The parakeet fluttered away to perch atop its cage, where it sat admiring the scenery. Its pleasant song, like that of the morning bluebirds in the park, was the only sound that graced the veterinarian’s office for a small breath of time.

“You were the Girl In The Box,” Malcolm whispered, helpless to do anything more than simply stare at her in awe.

“You were The Boy In The Basement,” she gasped, bringing her hands up to cover her mouth. She stepped forward, glancing all over him, recognizing him. She slowly moved her hands forward, almost as if she was gathering the courage to reach out and touch him --to confirm that he was real, that he was there, standing in front of her, as a full-grown man.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” he exhaled, just short of laughing with sheer relief. 

Her heart clenched with a motherly ache. “Oh, Malcolm.”

“I’ve been worried about you for  _ years.” _ The profiler blinked. The water in his eyes was building up enough to start to trickle down his cheeks. “You’ve been in all my dreams. I --I didn’t know if you were real for the longest time. I never…  _ I’m sorry,” _ he did his best not to sob, but failed.

She yearned to comfort him, but she was still consumed by shock. “How did you find me?”

“It’s a long story,” he laughed weakly, just a thread away from bursting into tears. “And it’s a story that I…” he took a breath, “I don’t remember all of it. Please. You owe me nothing, but I must know…  _ how _ did you escape that cabin?” he pleaded.

“I escaped because of  _ you,” _ she answered, emphasizing,  _ “You saved me, _ Malcolm.”

His breath caught in his throat. “I did?”

_ “Yes,” _ she smiled. Tears were starting to trickle down her cheeks as well.

“You let me go.”

* * *

There was only one dusty lightbulb in the basement, dangling from the exposed ribs of the ceiling slats. It glowed with a dim dishonesty in its light. It was a sinister, unblinking, starving, soulless light, like those of a certain green truck.

The Girl stared at the syringe her killer had left on the tool cart. It seemed to be waiting to be picked up again. Waiting to be inserted into the catheter in her arm. Waiting to be purged into her bloodstream. It lay on the cart quietly, patiently, and harmlessly. It seemed to be entertained by watching her struggle.

Her struggle was futile. The chair did not budge with each violent jerk and shift of her weight, and she craned her head to see it was bolted down into the concrete. The nylon ropes dug into her wrists as she tried to pull and twist her limbs free, but the knots did not budge or give way. She’d finally regained the ability to move her body, only to find she could do nothing to free herself.

She tried not to panic, but panic came. It was suffocating. Maddening. She began hyperventilating, and her whimpers and whines escalated to cries.

But her rising panic halted as she noticed  _ him _ .

The Boy, standing at the base of the stairs.

_ “Adam!” _ she burst.

He flinched like she’d frightened him.

She quelled her voice and reigned back her desperation. She couldn’t afford to scare him away. He was her only chance. “Adam, it’s okay,” she said urgently, using the only name she had for him even though it was a false one. “I need your help. Please. Please,” she gasped, out of breath. Her fear was thick and dry in her throat. She had difficulty swallowing, but she tried to wet her lips enough to speak.

Then she realized he was holding a pocket knife down by his leg. “You’ve got a knife?” she gasped. What were the odds?

He only stood at the base of the stairs, and stared at her. His orbs were wide and full, as if he’d forever forgotten how to blink. A deer in the headlights.

She tried again. “Adam, can you help me?” Another tug at the bonds around her wrists, and she begged, “Can you cut these ropes, please?” The child did not answer her, and she worried he hadn’t heard her plea.

Using a hoarse, scared voice, he whispered, “What are you doing here?”

“I’m not supposed to be here!” she wailed, emphasizing,  _ “I need your help!” _

He saw that she was crying, and took a careful step forward. The Boy moved sluggishly, as if he was sleepwalking. “Are you okay?”

“No, no, I’m not, I need your help. Quickly, please.  _ Please, _ come cut these ropes,” she repeated, knowing she was running out of precious time. “Please, he’s gonna kill me!” 

“Who?” The Boy asked.

_ “Your dad!” _

At one point in time, Malcolm’s first reaction might have been to shake his head, and tell her she was wrong. Tell her that his dad  _ helped _ people, and would never harm someone. But that point in time was in the past. Now, Malcolm didn’t have such faith in his father. Yet he also didn’t have the courage to believe this stranger.

Nervously, he pulled his eyes away to cast his surveying gaze over the dimly-lit room. The metallic, skeletal-thin tool carts gleamed beneath the single, soulless lightbulb.

“Adam, I need you to  _ snap out of it!” _

The surgical utensils lying neatly atop the carts appeared even more sterile and sinister.

“ _ Please, _ I need your help!”

Finally, The Boy blinked, and some of the glaze over his eyes was wiped away. He stepped closer, but wasn’t completely committed to approaching her. 

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” she urged, nodding reassuringly. “I’m not going to hurt you. Please, cut them, please.”

Trapped in a daze, he shuffled forward and held his knife in both hands. Slowly, he put the blade up to the nylon and began sawing at it. He watched it sever each thread in the tight, twisted rope, his mouth agape and his brow furrowed in concentration as he swam through the thick fog of his mind.

“Yes, yes that’s it, good boy,” she exhaled, caught in a brief moment of rapturous relief. “Good boy, thank you, keep going.”

All she needed was one hand freed. One hand, that was all.

Malcolm’s milky eyes were glued to the sword in his grip, watching it slide back and forth, back and forth across the rope. As he worked, his imagination surfaced out of his brain fog, and his mind retreated to a safe place. A warm place. A friendly place. A place far, far away from this nightmare.

That place was his bedroom back home, where his nightlight spun with the whirring of a tiny motor, casting glowing shapes along his walls. Where his story books were sprawled in his little bookshelf by his cozy bed, just waiting to be read aloud by an enthusiastic, theatrical voice before bedtime.

_ Knights had to use their weapons for good only; like saving a princess, or slaying fire-breathing dragons! _

Every obscure noise above them spurred The Girl’s heart to beat faster and faster, though it was already beating at the rate of a mouse’s. Malcolm didn’t notice any distant thuds or cries. He only stared at his sword as each thread of nylon  _ snap, snap, snapped, _ in response to the friction of the blade.

“Hurry. Hurry, almost there, keep going,” she encouraged between glancing at the basement stairs --as if she expected a monster to descend upon them at any second, bringing her death with it.

A final  _ snap, _ and her wrist was free.

She yanked her hand up and immediately went to work pulling the knots loose on her other arm. The Boy stepped back at her sudden movement, watching her in a trance. She moved as if she was a contestant in a timed competition for a million dollars. However, if she beat the clock, she’d win a prize much greater than a fortune. She’d win the right to keep her life.

The Girl reached behind the back of the chair to untie the rope around her ribs, then leaned forward to free each ankle. Her fingers fumbled only slightly, but were efficient nonetheless. She’d thought about this process every waking moment she was able to think straight, and now she finally,  _ miraculously _ had the chance to execute it. Pulling the last of the ropes away from herself and carelessly yanking the needles from her arm, she pushed herself up out of the chair.

“Okay, okay, come here,” she panted, out of breath from the fear, adrenaline, and  _ hope _ that fueled her every breath. She reached for him as she took a step forward, but pain shot through her leg, and she collapsed to the cold hard concrete on hands and knees.  _ “Agh!” _

Her ankle was still sprained from her jog through the park, and since that incident, she’d earned a few new bruises and aches. She struggled to stand, but quickly adapted to her body's limited capabilities, and kept most of her weight on her good leg. 

“Come here, let's go upstairs.” Hobbling on one foot, she grabbed a scalpel from the tool cart, then grabbed The Boy. Numbed by the will to survive, she hardly noticed the pain of every step. Partially using the child as support and mostly using him as a shield, she urged him to move ahead of her, up the stairs. Her hand was tightly gripping his jacket over his shoulder. She kept one hand behind her, hiding the scalpel. She was ready to bring it up to The Boy’s throat at a moment’s notice if she needed to --if they came face to face with a monster, or two.

“Come on, it’s okay,” she whispered to him. Their ascent was slow and cautious. Fear radiated from The Girl like the heat from a fire. It caused him to sweat, and grow claustrophobic. “Who are you?” he asked.

“Shh, shh.” They emerged from the basement stairway like a pair of mice poking their heads out from a hole in the wall, timidly assessing the vast, ruthless, uncharted territory ahead of them. The living room was empty, except for the overturned furniture, broken chair, and shattered liquor bottle. “Where’s your dad?” she whispered again.

“Up… upstairs,” he mumbled in response.

“Upstairs?” She glanced to the other staircase beside them, and backed away from it hastily. The scalpel moved to rest in front of the boy’s throat, but he didn’t notice. He only stumbled along, obedient to her guidance as she limped further into the living room. Glancing behind herself, she spotted the door.

The front door.

A blue hue permeated through the square window. It illuminated the short, plaid, country-style curtains that hung in front of the frosted glass, promising the eventual light of day. Promising freedom. Promising a second chance. Dawn was approaching, and for the two people huddled in the living room, it couldn’t come soon enough.

Overcome with the most basic but most powerful of instincts, her brain switched from  _ fight _ to  _ flight. _ Spurred into action, she released The Boy and dashed to the front door. The deadbolt turned easily in her desperate fingers and the knob twisted sharply in her hurried hands. A wash of outdoor air greeted her --cold, crisp, and saturated with the scent of pine. She wasn’t in Manhattan anymore.

Still, she did not hesitate to fly out the door and throw herself off the old porch, stumbling onto the gravel path. Her ankle screamed with a fiery pain, and she collapsed to her hands and knees again under its failure. The gravel was slippery, and the embrace of the chilly morning air penetrated her bones almost as deeply as her terror. But she forced herself up, and she forced herself to keep limping, fleeing for the cover of the tree line.

Malcolm turned around, stunned to see her go. “Wait,” he murmured, a renewed sense of abandonment settling in.

She didn’t wait.

She left him behind.

He moved to the open door, his heart pumping. _ “Wait!” _ he shouted, an ache of bewildered loneliness taking over him. It was powerful enough to  _ wake him up, _ and he lunged forward to race after her. “Lady, wait!”

Leaping off the porch, he chased her, his little feet pounding across the slippery gravel, then onto the wet grass.

Behind him, he heard his father calling, “Malcolm! Stop!”

Malcolm didn’t stop. He  _ couldn’t. _ He  _ had _ to catch up to The Girl. He had so many questions. He had to know who she was, and how she got there. He had to know if she’d been lying, or if she’d been telling the truth.

But The Boy knew the truth. He just didn’t want to accept it. He didn’t want to turn around, and see a monster in place of his father. He didn’t want to face reality, and come to terms with the fact that this strange Girl who’d been tied up in John’s basement was the same Girl who’d been locked in the box in his father’s basement. The Girl who he was going to kill.

_ “Malcolm!!” _

The child kept running, his eyes glued to the woman ahead of him. His breath clouded to the side of his face, swept away by the morning air as he passed through it. His blue jacket subtly  _ swish, swish, swished _ as he charged forward, made from the same material as his sleeping bag. His knife lifted up into his field of vision, and then lowered out of it with each slow swing of his arm.

Malcolm felt like he was running on the moon, captivated in a weightless lack of gravity. He felt like the tree line --and the woman who just dove into it-- were miles away from him. He felt like he’d never reach the forest, and join her in her freedom. But he kept running, so, so slowly, and for such a long, long time.

Maybe… just maybe… he wanted to escape, too. Maybe he wanted The Girl to take him with her, and not leave him behind.

With those monsters.

Maybe Malcolm was running from that cabin --from his father-- with the same amount of desperation and terror as she was.

All of a sudden, the boy plunged through the treeline, jolted out his dream-like trance by the cruel  _ slap _ and  _ scratch _ of needle-plump branches. Panting, he stumbled forward, inadvertently tripping on some roots. “Lady, wait!” he called again, pushing through the undergrowth as he sprinted through the forest. Dodging tree trunks here and there, he followed the sound of The Girl’s own trampling, and her occasional gasps of pain. She was making poor progress through the woods. He was closer to her now, not having fallen nearly as many times as her, and having two strong legs to carry him, unlike she did.

He stomped to a halt as he caught up with her. She was on her hands and knees again, crying and hysterical. She crawled through the bushes to match her back against a tree and glance behind them, holding her ankle with a grimace. She was trembling like a leaf --worse than he usually trembled-- and her breath hissed through her teeth, repeating, “He’s gonna kill me, he’s gonna kill me, Oh God, he’s gonna kill me” over and over.

The Boy stood by and watched her for a moment, helpless. There was nothing he could do for her.

The forest echoed with his father’s searching call.

_ “Mal-cooolm!!” _

A tremor cascaded down The Girl’s spine. She sank to the ground, curling up against the base of the tree to hide while pressing her hand over mouth to suffocate her desire to scream.

Malcolm’s heart drummed as he whirled around, trying to see through the thick trees.  He glanced down at The Girl again, and suddenly all was calm in his mind. All was  _ clear,  _ for the first time in a while. He realized, in that moment, watching her cower and stifle her cries, that only one of them was going to get out of there alive.

He knew what he had to do.

The Boy left her behind.

He ran through the forest again, except this time, he ran in a different direction. His trajectory was perpendicular to that which it’d previously been, creating a L-shaped trail from the cabin. He pushed as many branches out of his way as he could while he ran, and kicked his feet through every small pile of leaves he saw --anything to make a racket.

_ “Dad!!” _ he yelled,  _ “Over here!!” _

Malcolm did not stop running.

The Girl rolled onto her shoulder to watch The Boy go, peeking through the leaves and brambles of the undergrowth. A shadow followed after the child, tearing through the forest. Before long, the thrashing of branches and trampling of twigs faded in the distance, and she was alone.

* * *

“That brave little boy,” Sophie reminisced.

After a moment of wading through her emotions, she smiled and confessed, “I see him, sometimes. I see him when I help all these animals.” She sent a warm look to Sunshine, who was still happily perched atop his cage and chirping his gentle song. “I like to think that he enjoys watching me take good care of them.”

Malcolm smiled, touched to hear that she saw visions of him just as he saw visions of her. Only, hers were  _ good _ visions, and that made him all the more happy.

“For all these years, I thought you were dead,” she added. “I thought that man killed you.”

The profiler hesitated to ask, “Why did you think that?”

“I heard you scream,” she answered. She spoke as if the sound still haunted her.

Malcolm didn’t remember screaming.

After a short pause, the consultant mentioned, “Your sister’s been looking for you.”

The veterinarian’s heart visibly broke. “You found Eve?!”

“She found me,” he corrected with a smile. “I recovered your bracelet. We sent out a picture on the news. She recognized it.” He gently inquired, “Why didn’t you reach out to her? All this time….”

“I didn’t want her to get hurt,” Sophie professed, overcome with grief.

“What do you mean?”

The woman took a breath and willed her anguish back into the depths of her guarded heart. “Your father was arrested just a couple days after that trip, but the other one….”

“John Watkins.”

“He was still out there,” she whispered fearfully. “He was looking for me. I saw him at the hospital. I don’t know if he saw me, but….” She stared at nothing while she recounted, “I didn’t tell anyone the truth about what happened to me. I was too scared. Scared of him, scared of the police… I had a record. So I ran away. Again. I thought he couldn't find me if I made myself disappear. I thought he couldn't find  _ Eve  _ if I didn’t reach out to her...”

She trailed off, then looked down at her hands. They were trembling, and no matter how tightly she closed her fingers, they did not stop trembling. “All this time, I… I’ve been afraid that one day he’d show up.”

Malcolm stepped forward and reached out to envelop her shaking hands in his steady hold. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore,” he told her. “John’s in prison too, and I promise you, he is  _ never  _ getting out.”

She looked up into his eyes and held back another wave of tears. The news of The Junkyard Killer’s arrest relieved a tremendous weight from her shoulders, and she exhaled a great breath of rapture like she hadn’t been able to breathe in decades. 

“Neither of them are,” Malcolm assured. He blinked back a few tears of his own as he nodded, “You can be with your sister again, Sophie.”

A euphoric smile burst across her face as she opened her arms to hug him, and he accepted her embrace with a deep one of his own. They didn’t let each other go for quite some time.


End file.
